


Plaster

by girlskylark



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boxing, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate universe - Mafia, Beefcake Andrew, Bets & Wagers, Big Gay Mobsters, Blood and Gore, Boxing & Fisticuffs, Bribery, Buff Andrew, Con Artist Neil, Con Artists, Death Threats, Enemies to Lovers, Fights, First Aid, First Kiss, First Time, Fist Fights, Healing, Hurt Neil Josten, Light Bondage, M/M, Mentions of Neil's Father, Moriyamas SUCK ASS, New York City, Pain, Runaway Neil, Stalking, Swol Andrew, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-01 00:22:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15130985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlskylark/pseuds/girlskylark
Summary: Neil hasn't been to the megacity NYC since he was a child, but since gaining word of his father's disappearance over the border, now is Neil's chance to disappear to England for good. To get there, though, he has a few more plays to do—rigging his next boxing match, and a little more than pickpocketing.Boxing is Andrew's life, and it shows in his portfolio of undefeated wins—specifically, his win against the one and only Kevin Day. Since that day, however, he's been on the Moriyamas' radar, and it'll take more than a 'no' to keep them from forcing contracts down his throat. His secret alliance with Renee Walker and her gang of drug dealers adds an even higher severity to his spotlight. Handing Andrew over to the Moriyamas would mean war between the gangs, and so Andrew agrees to lose against the next name on his list to convince the Moriyamas he's a useless fighter.The only way to stop Andrew from losing is to make his competitor incapable of winning. Too bad Neil is on that list next, and next on the Moriyamas' list of casualties.





	1. REMATCH

Andrew considered an honest career in the WBA long before he fell in line with Renee and made a living in the less-respectable career choice of underground boxing (with a sprinkling of drugs on the side). IBF would have been a better match for him, what with his history of rigging bribes under Renee’s name. The way they distanced themselves during matches, and looked anywhere but at each other, suggested they didn’t know each other at all and it made the heists all the more thrilling. Though, they weren’t exact  _well off_ , and paying for rankings under the table would be more than a little difficult…

They made a living, though.  _Boy_ , did they make a living. Since his first fight against one of the Moriyama’s gem tribute, Kevin Day, he’d been fighting big names and winning even larger sums than the lesser names in the underground he fought and beat time and time again. 

Though, it didn’t change the fact that the Day-Minyard match won him a position on the Moriyama’s radar. More than once after a match since then, a Moriyama candidate approached him with a contract and a pen that he’d snap in two, and ignore the ink on his hands later. No one needed to know he was working for Renee Walker, and that though his wins were larger now, he wasn’t skimming much off the top of bets these days. The Moriyamas were sticklers about that stuff, and Renee didn’t want to take her chances.

“Who would have thought Day would be the death of our scamming career?” Renee had said through a sigh, rubbing a hand over her brow. “If you fight any other Moriyama thugs, we can’t take any chances.”

And of course Andrew did, and was, and would continue to do so until the Moriyamas either eliminated him from the competition or… eliminated him. He couldn’t win every match under their eyes. If he did, he’d be the one taking the money from their cultish family, and be a threat to their prosperity. He was an outlier amidst a sea of their loyal little shits.

“We could move,” Andrew suggested, leant over his knees as he examined the calluses on his hands. He listened to Renee scoff and mutter, “Be realistic,” and knew it was a long shot. He glanced up at her through lidded eyes, to where she sucked in a lungful of smoke and blew it through the screen of the room window.

She glanced at him, and lowered the cigarette. “Why? Thinking about ditching?”

“Renee, baby, I could never ditch you,” Andrew said cheekily, a grin slipping onto his lips without his consent. Renee laughed.

It wasn’t long before another poor, lesser-named soul was targeted by the Moriyamas in place of Andrew. The fact that word reached Renee and Andrew had their chests freezing over, silently suffering in the idea that the Moriyamas were bound to ask for Andrew to reconsider. This poor, lesser-named soul would be their warning.

Sure enough. Five days later, after the poor, lesser-named soul signed on due to having no other backers to prevent it, his girlfriend found him decomposing in his apartment after falling off the map and ghosting his match that week.

A warning to Andrew. And, inadvertently, Renee.

“Offer still stands,” Andrew said as Renee flicked through her mail whilst staring deadpan in Andrew’s direction. “Pick up everything and leave before shit goes sideways.”

“It already  _is_ sideways,” Renee said. She paced to the edge of the railing, her sneakers creaking on the metal flooring outside her office at the gym. The lights were all orange and tungsten beyond the concrete pillars. The sound of fists hitting pads and punching bags echoed with the laughter of fighters training with one another. 

Andrew’s expression darkened. The apprehensive look on Renee’s face said it all. He’d need to tone it down. The Moriyamas were on his trail, and he needed to stop sooner rather than later if he didn’t want to be asked to sign a contract again.

“I say we have two options,” Renee started, slowly, and Andrew knew then that he wouldn’t like either option. “Drop, or stop winning entirely.”

Andrew laughed, shaking his head. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Do what? Quit or lose?”

“Both. Renee, baby, I live for this in case you haven’t noticed.” Stopping meant finding something else to keep his mind off the inevitable. He’d been an existential little shit ever since the Moriyamas approached him. Death was inevitable, and who knew when the Moriyamas would strike to take him out of the ranks?

Ah, Death. How he wished for its sweet release—but Renee wouldn’t have that. She scraped his sorry ass up one bloody night and tossed him into the ring that saved his life. He’d fought before—for his life, barely, if he could call it a life back then—but navigating a ring with agility, speed, strength? That was what he lived for now, and it was (debatably) better than Death.

Renee watched him as he contemplated the offer. 

“If I lose,” he started, because he couldn’t face the first option, “then I’m not going down without a fight.”

She smiled sweetly at him. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. Besides, anything less and the Moriyamas would get suspicious. We’ll spread a rumor that you injured your shoulder, can’t play as well anymore.”

She stretched a hand out, and Andrew took it without a second thought. This was the way it was going to be, and the way he’d sign on for a match against no-name, lesser-name Neil Josten. 

Neil Josten, meanwhile, was arriving in New York City for the first time in half a decade, and loathed its smell before he even emerged from the train. It drifted in through the air filters into his cabin the instant the train shot out of the tunnels barreling between buildings, and swept over the city streets below. Neil glanced out the window with wide brown eyes, his gaze drifting skyward past neon lights and bustling streets and skyways. Vehicles rode alongside the train, and Neil couldn’t help but focus all of his attention on the luxury of them, the one he couldn’t afford. In terms of money he could, but his life depended on staying underground. If he emerged in something as shiny as that with a fake name on the contract… He couldn’t risk it.

It didn’t stop him from wondering, though. Last he’d heard, his father was south of the border, far from his native stomping grounds of the East Coast. That was over a decade ago, though, and now Neil was twenty-five and a product of his mother’s own design.

As he exited with the crowd emerging onto the skyway station terminal, Neil slipped his hand against the edge of a wallet peaking out of someone’s back pocket. He tugged it loose and slipped it past his sleeve, spinning away with the expert practice of someone pretending he’d lost his way. He checked the signs overhead as he interfered traffic heading against him, and snagged a clip of money as someone bumped into his shoulder. He kept walking, tucking the cash up his sleeve as though pretending to pull them over his bitter cold hands.

The wind howled through the terminal with the sound of trains coming and going. He exited the ramp and converged with the sidewalk traffic in the higher rafters of the megacity that was NYC. He looked up and around, neon lights flitting over his face in flashes of blues and reds. Car horns echoed from down the stretches of massive, monumental skyscrapers stacked one after the other overshadowing the layers of skyway traffic. Manhattan never looked so  _alive_ .

Despite all the bad memories that came with NYC, Neil couldn’t help but love it all the same. From the shitholes to the skyway subways, from shitty bars to even shitter hotels, Neil thrived—if only for the moment. Soon, his mind reassured him, he’d be back to the anxious mess he always was. For now, the traffic meant uninterrupted, disguised pickpocketing that ended at the corner of the block with a hundred dollars more than what he came there with, and credit cards he ditched in trash cans. He didn’t care for the hassle that came with them, and the last thing he wanted to do was brand his face on some ATM’s camera.

He found a quieter spot amidst the columns of some office building and perched atop the edge of the concrete foundation. He sifted through the cash and folded it up in the pocket of the stolen wallet and checked his tablet for internet. Phones were a waste, but a proper con artist in his field would be lost without  _something_ like this, a private IP address, and a mobile hotspot. He slumped against the mirrored windows of the building as people passed him by. He watched them all as his email loaded, and a list of new messages filtered in.

He scratched at his hairline, looking past the bandages on his hands from practice the previous day. He’d left late in the night, late enough to avoid peaked fare prices and attentive faces. Late-night train rides were almost always filled with half-unconscious druggies and unconscious elderly people.

He skimmed through his email chain with the coordinator at the boxing venue. The instant his opponent’s name was listed, he was on the hunt immediately.

There wasn’t much out there on the web in regards to the men Neil fought in the ring, but tracking and hunting was his specialty. He spent that late evening tracking down boxing gyms around NYC, and went in search of them in person. His meager savings from his run through the terminal was almost emptied on a cab across the city, but it was better than a late night trek through the megacity.

Still, he wound up wandering around block after block visiting gyms and journeying via subway from one to the other. He asked around the locations for an Andrew Minyard, holding up a photo on his phone, and getting minimal responses until he hit the northern border of the Upper West Side. By then, street life was more or less a threat on his life, and he hurried to the safety of the gym’s overhang, and ducked beneath tungsten lights into the underbelly of the building.

It was a newer establishment, built above an apartment complex as many businesses were. The wide glass panes stretched across the foyer, and, as he flicked his hood over his hair, he walked out in front of them, eyeing the photos on the wall as he went.

His gaze reflected on the pane of one such trophy listed near a photo of none other than Minyard himself. Neil reached towards it and pressed a finger to the plaque. It was dated—from six years ago. The man was  _small_ in comparison to the referee, and his cheeks still showed the weight of childhood. 

_Manhattan, born and raised_ , Neil mused, moving on to the next few newspaper clippings of the guy. None dated past three years ago.  _Must have been when he went under_ , he thought, glancing back at the secretary’s desk. The woman didn’t seem bothered by Neil poking around the main room. In fact, her eyes were on her tablet screen, disinterested in the minimal traffic.

He snuck to the edge of the foyer then, and approached the membership scanners. He jumped the machine and landed on quiet feet on his way to the gym facilities. He glanced back at the secretary and reassured himself that she wasn’t watching. He tugged on the edge of his hood to ensure it provided ample cover on his way to the main room.

Newspaper clippings were scattered across the walls from years before. He sifted through them, walking down the length of one neatly painted, white brick wall. Minyard seemed to be somewhat of a  _gem_ to whoever owned the gym. In adolescence, he was in the spotlight. But after? Neil couldn’t tell. Previous match records pulled up big names—Moreau-Minyard, Johnson-Minyard, and perhaps the most impressive of those, Day-Minyard. Andrew’s history coincided with that, but didn’t explain his reasoning for going up against a no-name like Neil. 

_If only he knew my other names_ , he thought wryly as he glanced over at the potent  _smack_ of fists hammering hard, meticulously, into the target on a punching bag. 

Neil stepped around concrete columns and honed in on the origin. The gym was empty around this time, and Neil didn’t blame athletes from ditching the grind at such an ungodly hour. Since the massive population boom, though, everyone’s lives seemed to jumble like the sun didn’t exist, and everyone ran on different schedules, different eight-hour work shifts.

So it seemed he and Minyard ran on similar internal clocks.

Neil watched from afar, at the start. He circled around one of the two center rings in the vaulted atrium, catching glimpses of blonde hair and black tank from around rope lines and padded corner pedestals. Neil stepped around the corner of the ring, crossing down the aisle and to the column that blocked his view of Andrew. All he saw was the jolt of the punching bag under each hit, and a wrapped fist being retracted and recalculated before hammering in again. 

Neil pressed his back to the column, and listened. He closed his eyes to the echo of fists meeting heavy bag canvas. The rhythm was comforting, and gave Neil a sense of repetition he wasn’t used to. He thrived on chaos because it was how he survived—never in the same place twice, never taking the same steps twice in a match. Any repetition was a weakness his opponent could hone in on. He prided himself on his speed rather than the strength behind his hits. 

Andrew, on the other hand, depended on it. Neil heard it in the impact, and the jolt of the heavy bag chains straining, clanking. Each hearty clash sent Neil’s skin tingling. The energy that built up inside of him, ready to pounce, to run, to duck and dodge—it all roiled in his static body until the hits stopped. 

Neil opened his eyes, listening as Andrew’s footsteps moved away. The man paused, his breath harsh against the emptiness of the gym. A moment later, a water bottle popped open, and Andrew guzzled half of it before moving on.

Neil skirted around the column as Andrew walked past, unaware of Neil’s presence. Neil caught a glimpse of the man’s retreating form as it passed, and stood in shock when he realized that this man hadn’t grown an inch since all those article photos were taken. In a split second, he managed to duck away as Andrew glanced over his shoulder at the spot where Neil once stood in the open.

_His height might be an issue_ , Neil’s brain reminded him as he now stood directly before Andrew’s punching bag as it finished swaying, and stood still beneath the tungsten lights. 

Even underground fights were adamant on rules, even if the betting wasn’t (in most cases). Neil had some research to do in that front, but until then, he’d have to worry for the sake of his gut over his face during this match.

He laid a hand over the torso of his sweatshirt, and flattened his fingers over the ridges he couldn’t feel, but knew were there. The divots, the creases, the puckered pink skin that would be on display during the fight. Few of the crowds he frequented forgot them, but cheating boxing matches was what he was best at. He’d left a peppered trail of stories behind, and even if his father caught wind of his boxing habits, he’d have over two dozen sites to badger for information before hitting Manhattan again. That is, if his father was willing to risk a run-in with an NYC marshal again. The name changes would mean nothing in relation to the stories observers would tell—a man covered in revolting scars they could never forget.

Neil waited long after the locker room door shut and echoed Andrew’s leave back to Neil again and again until every print of him faded from the gym. Neil stepped towards the heavy bag and pegged the weight posted alongside the logo. 150lbs. Neil’s mind blanked at the number, and he couldn’t process much more than the fact that he’d struggle in the fight, and he’d have to regret it later. This wouldn’t work if he didn’t win, though.

He had to win. His trip overseas depended on it. He could only get so far with pickpocketing in this megacity, but he couldn’t tell what was riskier—rigging an underground fight, or inadvertently causing a scene every other block trying to steal from a wealthy woman’s purse. No good pickpocket could depend on their pride alone to succeed, so Neil had to be realistic.

With the newspaper clippings still fresh in his mind, Neil snuck to a bench in the far corner of the gym and propped earbuds into his ears, slinging his duffle to his side. He looked up the headlines and pulled forth videos of Andrew’s fights from before going underground. 

At fifteen, Andrew Minyard was a beast. No hit could take him down, evidently, according to secondary school sports critics, sports fanatics, recruiters. Neil figured it couldn’t last long. Years of that dealt damage—the long-lasting kind. Still, at seventeen Andrew was still taking critical hits without hitting the ground. He’d fall on the ropes, stumble, struggle to catch his balance, but in Neil’s eyes, being on the floor meant something to Andrew he could understand. Going down wasn’t an option.

_I wonder what sort of punishment he’d give himself for that_ , Neil mused, remembering previous matches the frustration, the self-betrayal he saw in his opponents eyes when the referee put Neil’s fist in the air. 

A feminine voice sounded overhead. Neil flinched, tucking himself into the corner. He pulled his duffle onto the bench and tugged his feet up as he looked up. There was a row of windows against the white bricks, and, among them, a door opening up to a blue metal balcony and steps leading down into the gym. 

He looked, half-distracted by an announcer’s voice speaking rapidly in his ears through the fight on his tablet screen from six years ago. 

“—I talked with him and—What? Oh, yeah he isn’t thrilled, I can tell you that,” the woman said with a hollow laugh. “I’d watch your back next time you’re in the same room… Out for the night. Blew off some steam, but it won’t help. You know him.”

Neil waited eagerly through the pause, watching from around concrete columns for the woman’s expression. She kept her back to him, leaning against the railing, facing the entrance rather than a supposedly-vacant corner. 

“I don’t know, Nicky. I doubt he’d appreciate that,” she laughed, crossing an arm over her stomach with a shake of her head. “He’s quiet about that stuff. If he wants it… I mean,  _no_ I don’t watch him that closely. Or the other guys in the gym. And  _no,_ I’m not setting you up with anyone here. Stay the Hell away from my gym, Klose, this isn’t one of your clubs.”

She laughed some more, doubling over. She cackled and told Nicky Klose to stop pestering Andrew about it. Neil was typing Nicky’s name in before the phone call ended. He was tapping the webpage for a local gay strip club. Luckily for Neil, though,  _Nicky_ had social media, and was  _generous_ with the photos he supplied of Andrew.

Or was it Andrew?

Neil squinted at a picture that looked mirrored, like some cheap photo manipulation, but the background wasn’t effected. It was just… Andrew and a  _very_ accurate doppelgänger.  _Twins_ , Neil realized, surprised. He tapped the tag for the photo and pulled up an Aaron Minyard. He wasn’t active, and his only dash activity involved photos from Nicky. He searched for a relationship, and stopped at a happy birthday message addressed from cousin-to-cousin.

_They’re related_ , Neil realized. 

“Andrew!” the woman called, waving on her way down the clanky steps. Neil tugged his hood on tighter. They couldn’t see him, from all the way over here, but it was safer to be hidden. The woman came from the upstairs office—she probably worked for the gym, and talked to the members on a daily basis. He’d stand out without even saying a lie.

“I heard you talking to Nicky. I’m not going there.”

“Yeah, I told him as much. He said it might help.”

“His methods are not my methods. If I’m going to get laid, it’ll be on my terms.”

“As it should be,” the woman laughed. “And preferably without Nicky breathing down your neck about it. He’s always over there—I’m kind of concerned for his mental stability, spending 24/7 surrounded by…”

“Dick. Just say ‘dick’, Renee.”

“No, I can’t.”

“As if you’re righteous enough to be exempt from such a word, baby,” Andrew said, and Neil could hear the grin in his voice. The woman, Renee, laughed harder. “Aw, you’re blushing.”

“Stop it. I mean it, Andrew.”

“So do I. I know you had eyes for Moreau. You gotta get over him eventually—he’d fuck up everything and you know it.”

_Moreau_ , Neil halted at the name, and wondered why it sounded familiar. He searched it, and came up blank. He searched Aaron and Nicky’s friend and follower lists. Nothing. In the time it took for Neil to come up officially empty, Renee and Andrew were leaving and locking up and Renee was asking, “You wiped down the mats, right?” 

“Yeah, I’m not an idiot.”

One-by-one, all of the lights powered down, removing the hum of electricity in the walls, and leaving Neil in total silence aside from the distant murmur of Renee, Andrew, and the secretary all saying goodnight to one another and going their separate ways.

Neil spread out on the bench and spent his night watching videos of Andrew’s adolescent matches, and searched endlessly for a  _Moreau_ in relation to Renee to no avail. It seemed Renee just… didn’t exist at all. There were no photos of her on Nicky’s profile—which took a solid  _two hours_ to peruse back through the years—and Aaron seemed to live a life completely separate from the one Nicky and Andrew lived. He was a doctor, married, and lived in England.

It took nearly all night, until Neil was half-delirious with sleep, to realize that Andrew was gay. Belatedly, his mind prompted, _You could use that to your advantage_ , which was swiftly shut down by his slim morals saying,  _No, that isn’t fair or right_ .

But then again, Neil’s morals were slim and easy to break when needed. This could work.

He went to his duffle and unzipped it, searching through the folds of fabric for his swim trunks. He swam seriously for a while, when he lived on the West Coast, so he still had his spandex shorts rolled up into a wad in the far, far corner of his duffle. 

“Bingo,” Neil said, snapping them straight with a devious grin on his lips.

 

* * *

 

While Neil bummed at the gym the first night and stayed a hotel the second, Andrew almost wished he would have taken up Nicky’s offer as a wingman no matter how much he’d wish he hadn’t later. But by that point, it would have been too late to take it back, and he’d just be along for the ride. The ride.  _Fuck_ , he needed to get laid. Cigarettes just weren’t cutting the frayed edges of his nerves like sex would. 

He cursed under his breath as he blew smoke between his teeth and felt it burn through his nostrils. He shook his head and furrowed his brow from the balcony of his apartment. It was a small, micro apartment he loathed in large doses, but relished in the small ones. The few hours he slept to the few hours he spent alone after matches. Usually alone. Sometimes not. Nicky was often in charge of his victory celebrations that happened weekly until now.

“That seems unfair,” Nicky was saying, walking out onto the skinny balcony with him. They wedged together, elbow-to-shoulder, and while Andrew’s frown remained a neutral expression, Nicky’s puckered with bitter distaste. Contempt.

“You want to know what’s unfair?” Andrew said mockingly, and Nicky slid him a cold look.

“If you say ‘life’, I might actually punch you.”

Andrew eyed him out of the corner of his vision, and grinned. Nicky snickered. 

“You’re quite handsome when you want to be,” he said, twisting around to rest his hips against the railing, hands on the edge. Andrew laughed, shaking his head. “I’m serious.”

“Yeah, I know, because you tell Aaron constantly.”

“You two are too easy to differentiate. Your nose is all crooked. You can’t hide that, or your cauliflower ear.”

Nicky reached out to where blood pooled and heated his ear. It constantly made Andrew feel like he was blushing, not that he blushed often. He rarely made a habit of doing so if he could help it. Andrew slapped his hand away before he could touch his mangled, hardened ear before taking another drag. 

“Consequences,” Andrew responded through a cloud of smoke. He sucked in a deep lungful of clean air immediately after. He leaned back from the railing with slim lips and a careless shrug. “So no celebrations until they’re off my back.”

“Damn. No wonder you’re more bitter than usual. I know you secretly love the club atmosphere.”

“No. You know what I do love? The fact that your bartenders don’t water the shots.”

“Ah, yes, but once you’re too drunk to bother, they start watering it down.”

“Hence why I pregame.”

Nicky grinned, and giggled to himself with a shake of his head. Together they watched a light flicker on in an apartment across from Andrew’s, blinds drawn just so, so that they could see a figure of a man walking by the window in… absolutely nothing. Nicky whistled low, not that the stranger could hear, and Andrew scoffed, looking down rather than straight ahead. Nicky continued to watch, though, as the stranger changed, dressing first in a robe, and then slipping underwear on beneath. Nicky rested his chin upon his hand and slurred German through his lips in appreciation.

Andrew turned to stare at him, perhaps out of amazement. Intrigue? He couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he couldn’t imagine the life Nicky led. It took a severe force of will to stop himself from maiming Nicky the time Nicky first discovered Andrew’s sexuality. It was about the only thing they had in common, as far as Andrew knew, and before then he had always appreciated Nicky’s flamboyant fascination with men silently, from a distance, because he couldn’t never imagine doing so himself.

“Oy vey,” Nicky whispered, stepping away and back into the apartment with a toss of his hands. “Enough excitement for one night.”

Andrew almost laughed. Nicky’s occupation made peep shows tame. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow for the match,” Nicky promised on his way out. Andrew waved absently at him from over his shoulder, still leaning against the balcony railing. “Andrew.”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you. Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Andrew said. Shortly after, the door shut, and with it, a sigh slipped past his lips. He turned back into the apartment, and away from where the stranger had disappeared from the window across the street.

As dawn approached, casting a dusty blue over the city, Neil began to finish up a second night in NYC more anxious than the last. He slept light, woke hours before dawn at intervals—three A.M., four A.M., until five rolled around to the sound of his own heart racing from a sudden spike of adrenaline. He turned his eyes to the ceiling and really couldn’t blame himself. Coming back to Manhattan felt like a death sentence years ago, and maybe it still was. Whatever the case, he didn’t blame his body for worrying for his otherwise occupied mind.

He wrenched his water bottle out of his backpack. He always carried one—it was safer than even bottled water, if you considered tap water or fountain water safe. 

After a few gulps, he set it on the end table gasping, staring at his door. He slowly retracted his hand, settling on his elbows as he watched it in the shadows of the narrow hall between the hotel bed, the bathroom, and the door. 

_Something isn’t right_ , his mind told him. He pushed the covers away.

He stepped cautiously to the door. Clad in socks and basketball shorts, Neil raised a hand up to the old chain lock, and then again to the electronic pad. He tried the handle and reassured himself that no one would be getting in that morning. His mind was just playing tricks on him.

A soft turn to the left brought him to the restroom—cool tiles beneath his socks, and a wall-length mirror stretched against the back of the sink. He turned to the shower, cranking the dial for full blast. He turned on chilly water and splashed it over his face, and by the time he patted his face dry, steam began to cloud on the mirror surface. 

Something sounded in the other room. 

His hand shot towards the faucet handle. He cut the water, and listened over the pouring of the shower head, and the steam rising and collecting on his bare, scarred torso. He stared at himself in the mirror, and then back at the half-opened bathroom door. 

He put his hand quietly on the handle, and moved to shut it without a sound. Subtly wasn’t an option, though.

Someone kicked their foot against the handle, splintering the wood, and denting the wall where the door swung the handle into the plaster. Neil raised his hands in defense, slamming his elbow into his opponent’s wrist. They grabbed Neil by the arm and swung him forward. Their hands clenched in his hair before cracking his skull into the granite countertop.

Neil’s vision swam at once with black, curling dots as he slumped to the floor, arm hanging off the counter. He fell forward, dragged by the wrists out into the main room where a shadow of a man stood over the bed.

“Strap him,” the man said as Neil swept to his feet, and fell forward onto the bed. He groaned, hand going to his forehead.

Somehow, he found his voice as leather cuffed onto his ankles from around the underside of the bed. “Are you with my father?” he asked, only to have his face shoved forward, voice muffled in the wrinkled, used comforter. He swore he could still smell his sweat from the night before, tossing and turning, unable to sleep because of  _this_ .

“ _Idiot_ ,” the man seethed, and cursed in a different language. Neil prickled. Something Eastern—Chinese, perhaps? Japanese. He never learned the language. His mother favored Europe as a haven, not Asia.

Neil struggled to keep his hands to his chest before having them bent back. They stretched one out to the edge of the bed, a knee to his back, a hand to his throat. He could only flounder and struggle to twist his other arm beneath him and stop the man from going near his hands with the glint of a knife.

“Think of this as insurance—for losing to Minyard,” the man hissed, accent heavy as he cut the knife down on the base of Neil’s index finger. Blood bubbled instantly, swelling out of the flayed flesh as Neil gritted his teeth and made no sound into the comforter. He squeezed his eyes shut and thrashed, which only made the next cut worse, deeper, circling around his middle finger in a thick, wide stripe of pink and red. 

Heat ruptured in his hand, his pulse racing, his body reacting to the agony he knew too well from childhood. He pushed his face into the bed and gasped, cursing as the hands tightened on the back of his neck. His breathing restricted, chest compressing as blood rippled down his fingers in rivulets.

“Give me his other hand,” the man demanded, crossing around the end of the bed.

“No—Don’t—” Neil gasped, wedging his hand further beneath him, beneath where the accomplice dug his knee against the small of his back. He lifted just enough so that a knife could be wedged between Neil’s abdomen, and the soft flesh of his forearm.

He paused. Heat swelled against the exposed ridges of scars on his stomach. 

“We kill you now, and we’ll just do this to the next sorry bastard fighting Minyard next,” the man said. “Your life is expendable.”

“Fuck you,” Neil spat, voice weak and shaking as he loosened his arm. They wrenched his arm free then, and set to work.

Neil knew he could fight, just barely, and he was sure those men knew it to as they left through the window and vanished from existence. Neil lay hot and aching on the bed, all the heat in his body seeming to compress in his hands were blood leaked out onto the floors from either side of the bed. He curled his freed legs up and arced an arm over his head, turning to his side with a groan. His limbs shook, quaking as he examined the damage done to his hands.

They were peppered with red slashes and cuts that circled his fingers and made a clenched fist agony. He whimpered at the spike of pain down his wrist, tipping his forehead against the damp, sweaty skin of his forearm slicked with blood. 

_So much for that flight to Europe_ , he thought, tear tracks streaking his cheeks. He’d need more than just plaster for this—

He stopped, hardly able to prop himself up to see his bag still on the floor by the window. Or… perhaps plaster would be just enough. 

He got up, hands raised like a sterile surgeon stepping into the operating room. He knelt before the duffle, and with his elbow and teeth, unzipped it and retrieved cloth gauze and bandages, things all good boxers carried with them. He topped the stack with prewrap, and tugged out a bag of plaster powder—unopened and ready for use. 

With bloodied, shaking fingers, he poured the powder into his gloves for that night and shook it around, coating every surface twice, thrice over with the powder. The bandages went first after an antibacterial spray, and where he could, he layered the adhesive over untouched skin, the pad over the larger gaps that likely needed stitches, but his circumstances didn’t allow such a luxury.

He wrapped cloth gauze in a loose layer, topped with a tighter layer of prewrap to stick it all together. He knotted it around his wrist and cut the wrap with his teeth, grunting with the effort. His fingers were numb, immovable in the morning light as the day stretched into the afternoon.

Blood had already stained the gauze below the prewrap as he went for a third layer of padding, and topped that with three layers of excess prewrap. His stash was heavily diminished as he curled his hands into fists, gasping with the effort, and used his teeth to finish the job.

 

* * *

 

Andrew stood at the edge of the ring, glum as ever, and more bitter than usual as he listened to the crowd gathering around him. He watched Renee enter across the way, her white hair blinding in the dim lighting at the venue. The ring spotlights were charged down as people gathered, and Andrew diverted his gaze from Renee to a smiling Nicky off by the brick wall, nursing a drink with his hip pressed to his boyfriend’s. Andrew clenched his teeth as Nicky smiled encouragingly at him, arm slung around Erik’s waist. 

Andrew glowered at a distant wall, robe slipping from his shoulder slowly, minute-by-minute until the referee showed, and walked in with a narrow, medium-build man covered in a baggy sweatshirt and basketball shorts. Andrew straightened, the heels of his palms pressed hard into the edge of the ring as the referee gestured for the man to step up under the ropes. Andrew’s eyes drifted up the length of the man’s lean, muscled legs, past his straight hips, over the fluff of his sweatshirt before settling on a pair of brown eyes staring directly at him.

Andrew looked to the referee before joining his opponent in the ring. He swept his legs up and swung under the ropes, raising his eyes up past where they fell on his opponent’s chin.

The referee met them in the middle, but not before Andrew turned an indifferent look across the crowd, and raised a hand to those that suddenly whooped and hollered his name. He circled back and walked forward, eyeing his opponent once more before putting a name to the face.

“Neil Josten, Andrew Minyard,” the referee said. 

Neil reached a hand out, and Andrew shook it. The referee clasped his hand over their joined fingers. Andrew hesitated at the dampness of Neil’s heavily wrapped hands. It felt like he was shaking hands with a mummy, stiff and unmoving.

The referee said the usual spiel before separating them to opposite corners of the ring. Andrew lifted his water bottle up from the corner floor outside the rope and sipped it in small doses before wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. He stuffed his hands into gloves and beat them together, rolling his shoulders back and shedding the robe just in time to see Neil lifting his sweatshirt up. 

His basketball shorts were down, and Andrew spent a minute too long assessing  _all of that package_ constrained like a vacuum-sealed pack of vegetables and  _damn_ , even flaccid and covered, that cucumber looked tantalizing. Andrew’s mouth ran dry, and he swallowed thickly before realizing that this was the least of his problems.

The sweatshirt came off fast, revealing a canvas of taunt brown skin marred with pink and white ghosts of cuts. Andrew’s blood rushed to his ears, and he heard the audible hitch in everyone’s breath as Neil Josten put those scars on display. It distracted from his toned muscles, and his biceps that tensed for the fight and reminded Andrew of what was about to happen.

The match began.

The flare of adrenaline that shot through Andrew sent him forward, his movements practiced, his footwork second-nature by now. He nearly forgot to lay low until he aimed his first punch—for Neil’s gut—and missed. 

The guy was swift, Andrew could give him that, but he didn’t know the half of it until another punch met thin air, and a cry of outrage from the crowd as Neil proceeded to dodge another, ducking and spinning away with the agility his size and stature provided. Andrew was starting to gather that those toned legs were a product of excessive cardio work, and by the end of the first round, Andrew was panting keeping up.

Furious, he grew rash and he knew it. Watching Neil dance around him like they  _weren’t_ in the middle of a boxing ring flared hate through his chest and flushed his cheeks as he attacked time and time again to no avail. Neil deflected attacks after attack, taking hits to his forearms but nothing else. Bruises began to pepper Neil’s arms, sweat glistening on his forehead where his black hair slicked back. His mouthguard made it difficult for either of them to smile, but Andrew imagined that was what Neil wanted to do right then as round two started, and they were at it again.

Andrew went into the ring hard, raising his glove before Neil could think twice. He clobbered it against Neil’s cheek, fed up with being dragged around the first round. Neil staggered, shocked, and the instant Andrew aimed again, he caught a flare of desperation in Neil that sent him back onto passive-offense. Andrew could have screamed, missing another hit. 

_You’re supposed to be losing_ , his mind reminded him.

_Fuck off_ , his anger said as round two ended, and a bruise like spilled wine spread over the side of Neil’s face, the inflammation giving way to broken blood vessels and a swelled, purple eye from Andrew’s one victory this round.

_He’s not hitting me_ .  _I can’t go down if he doesn’t hit me_ , Andrew thought, trying desperately to reel in his frustration. He popped out his mouthguard and guzzled water. As he stuck it back in, he saw the annoyance on the crowd’s face, and how they chanted Neil’s downfall under Andrew’s honor. They were idiots.

Andrew wondered if Neil could tell. If Neil knew he was acting like a coward with those tactics. He went back into the ring, eyes drifting down from the bruise to the scars, and settling on those narrow hips bracketed by those slim, fitted shorts. Andrew swallowed hard as the bell rang, and he promptly took a hit to the face.

It came hard and fast—fast like Neil’s diversion tactics, and hard like a brick to the nose. His nose popped, blood sprouting and flooding his mouth. He spat it out to the side, coughing up the iron before hitching his breath at a punch to the gut. It cracked beneath his ribcage, and made it feel like someone stole his lungs straight out of his mouth and left the blood as evidence. He gasped, tipping to the edge of the ring with Neil at his front. 

It took a severe amount of effort to dodge Neil’s next hit. Andrew fell back, staggering, and threw his arms up. Neil’s punches left hard, circular blue bruises over the bones of his forearms. A hit like that could have taken him out cold, if aimed properly.

_Fuck_ , Andrew thought, remembering why he never wanted to go down (among other reasons). Going unconscious was the height of his worries, and so he ducked to avoid every hit to the face, and swung to the side to save his head. It did little to improve the state of his torso, though, and soon he was on his knees, gasping, unable to breath. 

Blood soaked his face, his lips, choking his throat. He stayed down through the count. He told himself it was because he was supposed to lose.

 

* * *

 

Neil was gone the second the winnings were divided. 

Andrew, cloth to his nose, watched the guy disappear, sweatshirt returning back over the scars. Those spandex shorts, though, left little to the imagination. Andrew watched him walk off until Nicky’s voice sounded over his own mind chanting the song  _Hallelujah._

“Fuck, dude, are you okay? That looks painful,” Nicky cried, racing over. He reached up as if to help, but remembered he didn’t know shit about boxing aftercare.  _Other_ forms of aftercare, though, were saved for Erik.

Andrew snarled at Nicky. “I’m fine.”

Nicky threw his hands up in surrender, and watched as Andrew crushed the half-empty beer can in his hand. Fizzy golden liquid seeped around the gauze wrapping, soaking it through like the blood did the skin around his lips. 

“It just… kinda looks like you just drank a gallon of Koolaid,” Nicky said, eyes wide. Andrew went to the nearest trashcan and chucked the can in. It hurt to twist and turn, but he didn’t anyway because  _fuck Neil Josten_ and his heavy hits. He pegged the guy as a light-handed puncher, but not  _that_ .

He resisted the urge to clutch at his abdomen and stood straight as he turned to the exit. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said over his shoulder.

“Wait, let us give you a ride—”

“No, I don’t need it.”

“What about the money?” Nicky called after Andrew. His answer came in the form of a middle finger, and nothing more. Nicky cursed under his breath and turned to Erik, who shrugged as though they shouldn’t have expected anything less than Andrew’s first defeat in over a year.

The crowd had died down by that point. Winnings weren’t usually cut until after the betting was sorted, and after betters gathered their shares. Andrew was used to late night matches—afterwards ending at a club or a bar or  _something_ before an even later night at his apartment. But after that shitshow of three rounds (three  _fucking rounds_ ) Andrew couldn’t stand to stand. He wanted to lay face-first on his mattress and call it a fucking week. Fuck Moriyama. Fuck Day for putting him on  _anyone’s_ radar. 

Andrew shoved into the men’s bathroom, slamming the door back so its handle hit the divot from so many other times before. The door swung closed with a bang that did little to disguise a muffled curse from beyond the concrete brick walls, coated in layers upon layers of dingy paint. 

Andrew curbed the corner and hadn’t expected the curse to come from atop the sink counter. He stopped, first at all the familiar red covering the counter, then at the split boxing glove on the floor covered in a blurry, muddy mix of red and white. He stopped at the sight of  _Neil fucking Josten_ with one such glove clamped between his teeth to muffle whatever sounds that came out of his mouth upon mending his mutilated hands.

“What the fuck,” Andrew said. “Did you try and make a smoothie with your hands?”

Neil leant over the counter, tipping his knees towards the mirror as he spat the glove out. “ _Fuck you_ ,” he spat, seething as he held up his hands. Gauze was stuck to them, soaked red. “ _You_ did this.”

“Sounds like something I’d remember. I don’t.”

“ _Liar_ ,” Neil seethed, leaping from the counter. He stormed at Andrew, who stared back down at the gloves, at the heavy white substance still sticking to Neil’s gauze.

“You plastered me,” Andrew said, but Neil’s fury did give. Andrew jabbed a finger at his wrecked nose he set back himself. “You put  _plaster in your gloves_ . Knew you couldn’t win against me without it, huh?”

Neil laughed, licking the front of his teeth with a disgusted smile. “Especially not after your thugs broke into my fucking hotel and cut up my hands. No, I don’t think I could have won without it.”

Neil turned back and kicked one of the gloves  _hard_ at the wall. The plaster cracked on the concrete bricks, sending a puff of powder out on the tiles. Andrew watched Neil go for the knife on the counter, leaning over the bloodied sink and sinking the blade under the sticky brown gauze against his skin. He tore it up as best he could, but the blade slipped and clattered into the sink. His fingers were shaking, teeth sunk into his lips with a barely-restrained scream of frustration, maybe pain. 

Andrew knew this wasn’t Renee. She wouldn’t mutilate his opponent—that’d just make it harder for him to lose. The only people who wanted him to win this match would have been the Moriyamas.

Andrew stepped over to the sink and grabbed the knife. He unwrapped his own hands, methodically, swiftly, practiced from years of doing so. By the time he was done and tossing the gauze, Neil was staring at him. 

“Give me your fucking hand,” Andrew demanded. “After the plaster it’ll be better if all the scabs just come off so we can disinfect it.” He didn’t have to say how much it would hurt. By passing Neil the glove, it said enough.

Neil bit into it, clutching as much as he could to the countertop as he raised his other hand up to Andrew. Andrew tugged the knife under a sticky portion of brown, oozing gauze and ripped it. He worked fast—cut, grab, tear hard. Neil’s breath came out fast, and settled only as Andrew went for the next patch. They switched hands. The clean one shook in agony, resting his wrist against the edge of the counter with his aching fingers half-curled. 

“You said ‘hotel’,” Andrew commented. “Not from around here.” 

His statement brought Neil’s eyes up to his. Neil shrugged, face pallid and sweaty. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t send those guys. A mob has their eye on me and wants me to win.”

“Why?” Neil said, muffled around the glove before Andrew yanked a strip of gauze up. He gasped, tipping forward with his forehead against his forearm. 

“Recruit me. If I lose more and convince them I’m not what they thought, they’ll reconsider,” he explained. “Mutilating you was supposed to improve their chances, not mine.”

Neil spat out the glove. “Sorry for ruining their plans.”

“Yeah, well, worked in my favor.”

Andrew bundled up the gauze and chucked it in the bin. He cranked the faucet water on high on two neighboring faucets and ordered Neil to put his hands under.

He twisted his duffle around and propped it up onto the counter. He kept a first aid kit in his bag, but Nicky recently got ahold of his bag and reorganized and cleaned his clothes. It smelled like lavender in there now, not that Andrew minded, but he opened the bag as far from Neil as possible before realizing that it was futile. Nicky must have forgotten to put the first aid kit back.

“You got pain killers? Soothing gel?” Andrew asked as a low hiss came out through Neil’s teeth as he completely submerged his hands under the current. He had his forehead to the counter as he shook his head.

“Used up—all the pain killers before. Same with the—antibacterial spray.”

Andrew sighed, eyes to the ceiling. “Alright. My apartment’s not far. I can stitch up the ones that are still bleeding there,” he said, voice even, commanding. It wasn’t so much of a suggestion as it was an order, and Neil heard it by the way he raised an eyebrow at Andrew. 

Andrew raised his eyebrows straight back.

He ditched Neil’s gloves—the guy cut them open with a knife anyways, and the plaster cast wrecked them. Neil put his forehead to the counter and cursed under his breath when Andrew shut off the water and ordered him to straighten up. His back was stiff when he stood then, hands even stiffer as he lowered them to his sides and let the sleeves of his sweatshirt cover them and the pink droplets of water slipping from his fingers. 

They left the bathroom as is, and Andrew made a mental note to apologize to the cleaning staff for leaving such a gruesome mess. He’d done it before from excessive nosebleeds, and always tried to clean up as best he could, but now wasn’t the time. He tugged Neil along by the elbow, casting wary looks out at the now-empty fight room, and the foyer where guys still mingled. He put his hood up before they could recognize him, and kept moving out the front door. Who knew if any of them worked for Moriyama, anyways.

Neil kept his mouth shut, still pale, and bottom lip numb from biting into it. He could taste the copper, though, and feel the swell of his skin where Andrew had hit him during the match. It speckled like spots of red wine, staining his skin in mixes of blue shadows. Andrew was no better. Neil could only imagine the state of that man’s abdomen given the number of times Neil risked the state of his hands over debilitating Andrew.

They didn’t talk, not until they approached Andrew’s apartment complex. Andrew swiped his card on the exterior door, and typed in a code on the interior door.He held the door open for Neil, who swept inside and headed for the elevator. He looked back at Andrew as he approached. 

“So people are after you?” Neil asked, voice hushed in the face of the secretary across the foyer. Andrew’s steady look told him to stay quiet. 

Neil sucked his lip in as the elevator door opened. Once inside, Neil turned, opening his mouth, only to be silenced by Andrew’s scathing eyes once more. Andrew scanned his card on the wall scanner, and it took them to the proper floor. They didn’t talk until they were behind the safety of Andrew’s apartment door with the handle locked, and the chain drawn over the door. 

Neil stepped into the confined space, already feeling his claustrophobia skyrocketing. This was why he never lived in NYC. He imagined the market used to be fairer, but paying a grand a month for a broom closet didn’t seem reasonable to him. Still, Andrew seemed to have all the necessities. A bathroom laid to the right of the foyer, across the hall from a closet, and the kitchen was posted in the corner beside the restroom where the plumbing could be shared. Across the “open” expanse of the living room was a balcony, and Neil was already heading for it.

He used his elbow to crank open the door and step out into the air. He looked down past the skyway to the dark, dark streets below. Neon lights glowed pink up to where Neil stared in amazement. With the door open, and out on the balcony, he didn’t feel so confined. It wasn’t the cage he imagined it was.

He looked back at Andrew, who was folding up the living room couch and pulling down a Murphy bed from the wall. The instant it was settled, Andrew gestured for Neil to sit down. 

He complied, toeing off his shoes and settling in on the edge facing the kitchen. Andrew pulled down a bottle of pills from the cabinet, followed by a hefty first aid kit clasped in a metal tin. He lit a scentless candle beside the bed and sterilized a needle over it. All the light in the apartment came from beneath the sink, the pinkish light from the windows, and the candle on the shelf.

“They recruited me a few weeks ago. When I said no, they recruited someone else and killed him as a warning,” Andrew explained, shaking the needle out. He set it on a towel and brought a damp cloth to Neil’s hands. Where he pulled back blood, he examined the cut, propping a flashlight in his mouth to get a better look.

“A warning? So you thought they’d ask again and figured you should lay low and lose a few matches.”

Andrew nodded, heavy brow furrowing in concentration. He laced the stitching thread through the fine end of the even finer needle. Neil didn’t need to be told to hold still. He did so without complaint, though he wished he could bite into something other than his own teeth. 

Andrew popped the flashlight out of his mouth and set it aside. He grabbed a salve and soothed it over the smaller cuts already stiff with scabs. “Can’t say they’ve broken and entered my apartment. I picked this place ages ago. The security is decent, considering, and I have my own system that’s motion-censored at the door and balcony.”

“Ages ago,” Neil repeated, and Andrew shot him a warning look. Neil scoffed, “Jesus. Are all the unprofessional boxers around here dealing with mobs?”

“Maybe,” Andrew said, leaning back on a hand. He tipped his head to the side. “What about you? Not from around here.”

He didn’t continue, but Neil knew what he was thinking of. It was hard for people to ignore his scars at first glance, but Andrew’s eyes never wavered from his. Neil swallowed hard, hands quivering on his lap, skin swollen from mistreatment. “Philly. I took a train here from Philadelphia.”

“Yeah, and before then?”

“I’m not talking about this with you.”

“Who knows if we’ll ever see each other after this,” Andrew crooned mockingly, quirking his eyebrow at Neil. In the dim light, he almost missed the way those hazel eyes dropped past Neil’s baggy sweatshirt where his shorts crept out, just barely. 

The skin on Neil’s neck flushed with heat, and it only raised higher from there with the way his heart stammered and scrambled, tripping over itself as he stared back at Andrew. 

“You should probably leave the city,” Andrew suggested, the cash in Neil’s duffle weighing heavier.

“I plan to,” he started. But it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t believe luck landed him here. He was short a couple hundred—not that he couldn’t get it pickpocketing, but this was  _far_ more reliable a shot. “Not until tomorrow morning,” he finished.

He leant forward, eyes watching Andrew’s unyielding gaze until they were too close to focus on both eyes alone. Neil’s gaze flickered between Andrew’s eyes—hazel in the shadows, but green where Neil could see them close up, their noses touching. Neil tipped his head, almost questioningly, but it gave Andrew perfect access to draw their lips together.

Neil parted his lips to the taste of Andrew—his lips, his tongue, the inside of his cheek as they pushed together over Andrew’s bed. He felt the heat from Andrew’s facial bruises mingling with his own, and in the heat of it all, he forgot to breath.

He gasped for air as Andrew licked across his lips and the self-inflicted indents on his bottom lip. He sucked Neil’s lip into his mouth and peppered it with soft kisses as Neil caught his breath, chest heaving. The nerves and thrill of kissing someone crackled across Neil’s mind and skull like the shell of an egg shattering and seeping excitement through his entire being. He couldn’t remember the last time he kissed someone anywhere other than an innocent peck on the cheek.

It never seemed interesting, but he could see now why people tended to crave it.

Neil leaned in for more, ducking his head to capture Andrew’s mouth where it had dipped to his jawline. Andrew caught him by the throat, cupping his hand around Neil’s jaw. His grasp was firm, almost alarmingly so, but  _fuck_ , Neil’s eyes were dilating and he didn’t care. 

“Do you want this?” Andrew asked, hushed voice deeper than Neil could have imagined. 

He nodded against Andrew’s tightened grip.

“ _Say it_ ,” Andrew demanded.

“Yes,” he said through swollen lips.

Andrew went for his sweatshirt then, tugging it up by the hem as Neil worked his hands gingerly through the sleeves. The instant the sweatshirt was gone, Neil’s hands raised over his head, Andrew grabbed him by the wrists, holding them up. “No touching.”

“Not that I can, anyways,” Neil said, and grinned at the dull look Andrew gave him for it. Truthfully, he was afraid of damaging them further, and he figured crossing the line Andrew just drew would  _definitely_ be  _one way_ to inflict further damage.

Andrew stared intently at Neil before slowly unclasping his hands from around Neil’s wrists. Neil kept his arms up, settling his forearms back over his head as released the breath he’d been holding. It only hitched again when Andrew shed the coverup and stripped down to his boxers, exposing a stocky build of powerful thighs, biceps just as hefty, and a torso that narrowed into V-lined hips. He turned to grab something off a top shelf, and Neil stared helplessly at Andrew’s Dimples of Venus, and the sinewy muscles of his toned back…

Neil never bothered to dwell on  _first times_ or  _lasts_ because everything felt temporary to him. He wondered, though, as Andrew wrapped silk around his wrists, whether or not he acted experienced. Would someone like Andrew be able to tell? Did it matter, that he’d never slept with anyone before? 

Nothing seemed to break Andrew’s intentions, though, after testing Neil’s earnestness with a slicked hand between his bare thighs, slipping against the sensitive skin between Neil’s tight spandex shorts and his trembling skin. “Is this okay?” he had asked, and Neil vocalized his approval, and that was that.

And afterwards, when exhaustion seeped into them both, Neil feigned having given in to it. His eyes dropped, and he watched through his lashes as Andrew flipped onto his back and sighed up at the ceiling. Neil liked to think he was as content as Neil was, but he wouldn’t know unless he asked. He was curious, he couldn’t help it.

“Good?” Neil asked.

Perhaps it had something to do with the hitch in his voice when he asked that suggested something more. Something…  _personal_ . It didn’t feel like a one night stand then. With the illusion shattered, Andrew turned to search Neil’s eyes for the reason why he was asking. Andrew reached both hands up and wrapped the black, silk ribbon around one hand, and then the other, damp with Neil’s sweat.

“Yeah. Yeah, it was good,” Andrew said. “You?”

Neil nodded. He didn’t know what sex was supposed to feel like, but it was  _wild_ , it was  _intense_ , it was tantalizing in every sense of the word. He felt like he had just tasted his new favorite flavor of candy, and there was only one person in the world who kept it stashed in their pockets for him alone. He wanted to taste it again, but that was that. 

He looked back at the ceiling, and then down at his hands as they started to throb again. 

“Stay the night.” Andrew’s voice startled him out of his momentary peace. He blinked suddenly, remembering what this was. He would have left by now if this was a one-night stand. “I’ll help you get to LaGuardia in the morning. Also, probably a good idea to clean up before sleeping—there’s wipes in the cabinet over the toilet.”

The shift in conversation had Neil laughing as he sat up. “Graceful transition,” he said, giggling a little as he shoved Andrew’s legs on his way up. He regretted it immediately. “ _Ow_ , fuck, bad idea.”

Andrew scoffed something along the lines of, “You did that to yourself,” as Neil headed for the bathroom, grabbing his duffle along the way. 

Neil dropped his duffle in the narrow shower (the only place that it seemed to fit) and shut the door behind him. After pissing and “cleaning himself”, as Andrew described it, he tossed the wipe and changed into a tank, underwear, and basketball shorts. He looked at himself in Andrew’s mirror before opening up the medicine cabinet out of curiosity.

He was distracted enough to miss his opportunity of watching Andrew fall asleep. He stepped out of the bathroom, duffle over his shoulder, and stopped short at the sight of Andrew breathing softly, mouth slightly ajar, closed eyes to the ceiling. Neil waited like that for an entire five minutes, looking around the apartment until he was certain he wouldn’t wake the guy.

Slowly, he crouched beside Andrew’s bed where he’d discarded his shorts. At the betting booth, he’d seen Andrew slip his own winnings into his pocket, and there, he found a wad of cash waiting for him. He looked up at Andrew’s sleeping profile as he extracted it without a sound.

He rolled it up as best he could with his wrecked hands and pocketed it. He drifted away, towards the door, and thanked the nonexistent Lord for the world’s progression of silent door hinges, and even quieter door handles. He ducked out of the room without a hitch, and maneuvered to the stairwell where he hurried down at a brisk speed.

Neil counted the cash as best he could, his heart racing in a dangerous mix of relief, fervour, and anticipation for his subway ride to LaGuardia airport. He’d be on the first flight to England before long, and he’d leave this shitty country behind once more for the sake of his own sanity.

He burst through the stairwell door and slowed to a casual walk across the foyer. He glanced at the secretary, briefly, before pushing past the interior glass door. He reached the exterior door just as the elevator dinged beyond the closing interior door.

Neil made it to the street and nearly sprinted before being jolted to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk, a hand clasped tight to his wrist. He recognized that firm grasp, those calloused hands, and looked back to find Andrew Minyard’s stoic expression more hollow than before.

“Hand it over or the hand comes with me,” Andrew said through clenched teeth.

Neil stared at him, and his hesitation was enough to have Andrew shaking his wrist, jostling his damaged fingers. Neil hissed and turned fully to him, heaved forward with another sharp yank. A welterweight like Andrew could crush Neil’s wrist if he wanted.

“I can’t—” Neil started, and had the good sense to stop short at the tick in Andrew’s jaw. He sighed. “The winnings weren’t enough to get a flight out. I’m stuck without your half.”

“Find something else,” Andrew hissed. He reached for the pocket where the noticeable bulge of money sat. Neil deflected him, but it came with the price of an unreasonable amount of pain. 

Andrew hesitated, and ignored Neil’s futile attempts to keep the cash. He swept it out and stuffed it into the breast pocket of his leather jacket. He wasn’t wearing anything other than that, and a pair of black boy shorts. The crowds around these parts didn’t care so much as they stared in appreciation, and Neil scowled at the people who went by.

“I’m sure you’ve got something up your sleeve,” Andrew taunted, dropping Neil’s wrist and backing away to the apartment. 

He shook a cigarette pack out of his coat pocket and lit a cigarette on his way back to the apartment complex. Neil traveled his eyes down Andrew’s brawny thighs and calves before sighing out at the street. The door buzzed, and Andrew swept in, and Neil jolted forward to catch the handle. 

“Wait—” he started, sneaking into that inner pocket between the outside and the in, and where Andrew was hardly willing to listen to him. Still, something made Andrew stand there, back to Neil, not reaching for the door. 

Neil sighed. “I would have cast my gloves anyways,” he said, and saying it had Andrew’s shoulders tightening, fists clenching. “Cheating boxing matches has been my best means of cash for… a  _while_ now, and I’ve been saving up to start fresh abroad. I thought the winnings from this match would have been enough, but it wasn’t.”

Andrew stayed quiet, and so Neil continued. “I researched you. Before the match. Your cousin owns a club, right?”

Andrew turned to glower at him out of the corner of his eye. “Set foot in there and I’ll—”

“—Help me get a job there,” Neil finished for him, though he could tell by the twist of irritation on Andrew’s face that this was  _not_ what Andrew had in mind.

“Excuse me?” Andrew all but laughed, crossing his arms. “First you insult the integrity of what I do, and now you want a job at a _strip club_ ?”

“As a bartender. I worked as a bartender when I turned seventeen—I’ve never been able to hold down jobs because I’ve been moving just about every month since I was… God, I don’t even know when,” he sighed, rubbing the back of his hand over his forehead. He looked hopefully at Andrew, who narrowed his eyes further. “I’ll stop boxing. Just—help me get a job at Nicky’s place.”

“You’ll stop boxing.” Andrew’s flattened voice gave Neil the hope he needed. He didn’t know why, but it sounded like progress.

The exterior door opened. Neil stepped aside to let the woman pass. She eyed them both suspiciously, before pegging her eyes on Andrew and greeting him as a neighbor. Neil couldn’t ignore how her eyes dropped over his exposed, muscled chest and legs as she opened the interior door and walked through.

Neil stopped the door as it was about to close, and raised an eyebrow at Andrew. 

Andrew sucked in a lungful of smoke from his cigarette and blew it in Neil’s face as he walked by, shoving the door open all the way. “Fuck you. Get inside,” he demanded. 

Neil stole a moment to dance in victory—just long enough for Andrew to grasp the full extent of Neil’s excitement before he hurried in and followed Andrew to the elevator. 


	2. WORK

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil gets a new job!

The apartment was shrouded in pink and blue light that merged into purple underneath Andrew’s kitchen lights. The air was stiff, and soon clouded over in smoke. Neil didn’t mind the smell, he never did.Andrew smoked with the balcony door open, claiming the window spot on the bed so he could blow the smoke towards the breeze. He was quick to claim the spot, and Neil felt less inclined to accompany him on the bed. He couldn’t look at Andrew without feeling the weight of the guilt on his chest. 

Neil felt guilty enough to know what it was, how it felt on his already-sullied conscience. He wasn’t used to feeling guilty about how he treated others, though. He was guilty for circumstances that didn’t apply to him. He was guilty for reasons that didn’t make sense in the grand scheme of things. 

He sat with his back to one of the paneled walls he knew housed something he couldn’t see—maybe a table, or a drawer, he couldn’t tell. He swung his duffle around and unzipped it, fumbling around for the bag of cash wedged into the far corner underneath the clothes. He counted it all again, just to make sure of something he was already sure about. The act of sifting through money was habit by now, and made him feel a little less overwhelmed by his own circumstances.

Andrew never asked how he knew. How he knew about Nicky, about the club. Neil watched Andrew out of the corner of his eye, as was also habit. Andrew kept his eyes on the city lights, on the window across the way, not quite seeing the man walking in front of the blinds again. He was clothed, not that Andrew noticed. 

“Do you do this often?” Neil asked, to fill the silence that was stifling. 

Andrew’s approval was starting to gain momentum in importance. Approval meant that Neil was less likely to have to build a life here in NYC. Leaving Andrew’s apartment meant getting one of his own, forking over the cash for a lease, and having to raise double, triple, quadruple what he actually needed to get to England. 

It meant being on whatever terms they were on before Neil stole the money. He felt the desire like a hook in his chest, tugging harder and harder with the sour way Andrew looked at him then.

“Do what?” he said, flicking ash onto the balcony threshold. “Put up con artists?”

“No. Well, I mean  _yes_ , but that wasn’t what I meant.”

“You don’t need to know,” he said, eyeing Neil sharply over his shoulder before turning away again. 

“ _Need_ and  _want_ are two very different things,” Neil said, tipping his head back against the wall. He looked around Andrew’s meager apartment. “No one  _needs_ sex.”

“No one needs to hear you mouth off.”

Neil grinned, so that when Andrew twisted back around to look at him, he saw just how smug Neil was. Andrew scoffed, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. He sighed, and donned a tight, mocking smile. “You’re pushing it, Josten, if that’s even your real name.”

Neil pursed his lips, trying to fight back his Cheshire grin. “Yeah, well, you don’t need to know that.”

“You’re a piece of work, but I’m sure you already knew that,” he quipped, falling back against the pillow Neil had laid against nearly an hour ago. He settled in as if to sleep, but Neil was certain neither of them would come even close to that. 

Neil shook his head, looking down at the money in his hands. He counted over it again, separating the bills once more before stuffing them together in one, jumbled pile. They were zipped back into their designated bag and submerged beneath all his clothes. He zipped his bag back up and, after a moment of hesitation there on the floor, stood up to head to bed.

Neil settled in as much as he could, but all the muscles in his back and legs were braced and ready to run at any given moment. He stared, eyes wide open, to the ceiling. Andrew’s lidded eyes studied the glow of neon lights overhead as they merged with dawn. Neither of them moved for the time it took for Andrew to find his voice.

“That was your first.”

Neil blinked, startled by the statement. He glanced at Andrew, who didn’t move, not even when Neil spoke. “Yeah. Why?”

“You did it to get my money.”

Neil had an answer to that, but he couldn’t say it. He wasn’t sure if it was his gut reaction, or a reliable answer, so he stayed quiet until Andrew spurred him on by repeating it, the inflation of his voice hinting at the question he needed answered.

“At first, yeah.”

“Did you even want it?”

Andrew’s words weighed heavily on his chest. So it wasn’t just personal to Neil.

Neil waited for Andrew to turn to him, and when he didn’t, Neil reached out to tug on Andrew’s chin. Andrew was almost stubborn enough to stare at the wall beyond Neil than Neil himself, but eventually, their eyes met. “I said ‘yes’ and I meant it,” Neil said.

Andrew studied him for a moment, eyes flitting over Neil’s face before turning away with a scoff, and a hollow laugh. He shook a finger at Neil. “You’re fucking good at that. God.  _Fuck_ .” Andrew put his hands to his face, and it drew Neil’s attention to the black armbands on either one of Andrew’s wrists.

Andrew laughed painfully, and the sound was so alarming, Neil pushed up to his elbows, staring down at Andrew as the man nearly dismantled before his eyes. 

“I’m fucking serious,” Neil said, nudging Andrew by the arms. Andrew let his hands flop to the side, eyes hesitant to meet Neil’s. “I’m serious.”

Andrew pushed himself up, twisting around fully to peg Neil with a withering glare. “So am I,” he hissed, jabbing a finger at Neil’s throat. “And you’re an idiot if you are serious. Are you shitting me right now?”

“And are you trying to make me regret it? Because I can assure you that isn’t happening,” Neil said. Andrew’s expression twisted in anger, and it took a severe amount of effort to keep from bunching up his bruised nose.

They stared each other down, neither willing to give in. Neil set his lips tight, wishing he could clench his fists around Andrew’s leather jacket. Instead, Neil leaned in to kiss him, only to have his jaw caught in Andrew’s viselike grip.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Andrew seethed warningly, nails digging into the flesh of Neil’s neck. 

Andrew shoved him away roughly, and before Neil could recover, Andrew was pushing off the bed and yanking open a drawer from the wall. He ripped out a blanket from it, and grabbed the pillow from beside Neil. Neil watched him stalk around the bed and settle in the hall to the front door. 

Neil stayed where he was long after Andrew settled in for sleep on the floor. Neil stared at him a minute longer before turning his gaze to the wall straight ahead. He fell back against the pillows with a huff, and kept his eyes on the ceiling as the guilt made him sick to his stomach.

 

* * *

 

First thing the next day when Nicky was decidedly awake, Andrew had them up and out of the apartment. They purchased food at the marketplace, and while Neil munched on a banana, a nervous wreck over leaving his duffle in the apartment, Andrew dialed Nicky up.

“Hey,”Andrew said.

“He calls at long last,” Nicky chimed. “You never call, especially not this early.”

“I know, but I’ve got a fresh idiot for the taking. You at the The Court or not?” he asked, and the instant Nicky answered affirmative, Andrew ignored the rest of his questions. He hung up and pocketed his phone so he could go back to downing an entire cup of coffee in a few long gulps. Neil raised an eyebrow, impressed with Andrew’s lack of heat sensitivity.

“It’s a __ bar,” Andrew said, and before Neil could voice his opinion on  _that_ matter, Andrew went on, “Nicky pays minimum for bartenders, but the tips are better than whatever check you’ll get at the end of the month. You don’t have to be chatty, just listen to the customers and they’ll tip you well.”

“Got it,” Neil said in mild surprise. He shook his head to rid it of the shock. “Do you think he’ll have an issue with the scars?”

“No. Well, he personally will, but customers will think they’re interesting. Most of the workers Nicky hires  _are_ ,” he droned, rolling his eyes to the streets and the shop signs over their heads. To the mannequins dressed in lingerie beside them. They kept walking.

The sounds of traffic were a constant echo in the megacity, and it raised Neil’s anxiety approximately 10%. His attention sought out all the people passing around them, reminding him of where he was, without his duffle. He was so used to the weight on his back that without it, he was in a constant state of panic—worried someone might have taken it, snatched it right off his shoulders without him knowing. 

Neil looked all around, eyes flitting over the workers passing them without a second glance. He stared after a particularly sketchy man before catching Andrew’s eyes on his way back to the front. Heat rose up his neck.

“What?” he said incredulously, straightening his sweatshirt.

Andrew shook his head with a knowing grin, and didn’t ask. Neil interpreted it as his way of understanding Neil, in some way. 

Andrew led the way down a narrow stairwell between the buildings. All down the steps, they were met with shady storefronts, flashing lights, and even flashier merchandise standing out on platforms. Neil kept his eyes ahead, though he couldn’t help but linger on the first few in astonishment, or perhaps horror. He couldn’t judge peoples’ professions, but he was starting to understand what sort of club The Court was just by the establishments surrounding it.

In the thick of it all, Andrew tugged Neil aside, and through the golden archways of The Court foyer. 

Truthfully, Neil had never had a reason to set foot in a club, and so he wasn’t sure what to expect of his first experience. It was hard to focus on any one thing, and it made it difficult for him to get a handle on the spike of adrenaline that came with it. He could deal with street crowds, when he had his life on his person, but the moment Andrew locked the apartment door, he cut that lifeline to his duffle. 

Neil lost his breath over the threshold to the main hall. It was a tall, narrow strip of what Neil assumed used to be a warehouse. He could hardly believe any relative of Andrew’s could afford such a space as this, but he understood the appeal. It seemed the best market these days was sex, and Nicky Klose was smart to exploit it. 

It was off-hours, and the cleaning staff was going through the facility with mops and bleach. Andrew walked Neil past them, and pointed up to the far end of the dance hall, beyond the pillars separating the floor from the bar, and the colored chandeliers overhead glinting blues and pinks on the staged cages. Neil ignored what the cages meant.

There was a balcony up there, and almost as soon as Andrew directed Neil’s gaze there, a familiar man was stepping out and eagerly waving down to them. He had a head of black curls Neil recognized from stalking his social media.

“Bring up the fresh meat!” Nicky called down, hurrying back into the office and shutting the balcony doors. He swept the curtains closed, blocking Neil’s view of him.

Neil looked back to Andrew, who walked ahead to the staff door. He bumped his hip against it, and gestured Neil inside. Andrew’s constant, unmoving expression was more amusing than unnerving, and Neil grinned as he passed Andrew and followed the gesture to the stairs. Andrew rolled his eyes from behind Neil and followed the guy up.

The second floor office space consisted of a wooden countertop smack dab in the middle, surrounded on all sides by a mosh-posh of chairs that seemed to have come from entirely different sets. The walls were covered in photographs—the older kind, and newspaper clippings. One side of the wall was entirely converted into a wall of hangers and racks for clothes—a large portion of which were settled on the countertop for adjustments. Amongst it all, however, stood Nicky Klose, stepping across the floor with a hand outstretched to Neil.

“Oh my God, I thought I recognized you! You kicked my cousin’s ass!” he said, voice chipper despite the content. Neil lifted his eyebrows and nearly accepted the handshake, but his hands were still bandaged and more stiff than the day before.

“More or less,” he said, and raised the bloody bandages. “Recovering.”

“Oh! Oh, God, are you alright?” Nicky cried, reaching for his wrists. Andrew stepped forward then and smacked Nicky’s hands away. 

“I’m fine,” Neil reassured Nicky, who was glaring daggers at Andrew, who continued on to pour himself a drink at Nicky’s minibar. It was the classic kind from the seventies that you’d find in homey living rooms serving evening cocktails.As Andrew fiddled with the glasses, Nick tugged Neil by the sleeve over to the countertop.

“So Andrew says you want to bartend?”

“I already have my license. I learned when I was seventeen, but I’ve never been a drinker,” he confessed, nudging himself up onto one of the stools. Nicky tugged on the torso of his sweatshirt as a silent order to remove it.

As Neil lifted it up, Nicky turned to Andrew. “Honestly, sober bartenders are the best. I don’t have to pay for the extra drinks they pour themselves,” he explained, and Andrew donned a mocking smile before taking a swig.

Nicky turned back, and Neil watched his eyes expand, drifting over the patchwork of markings all along his clavicle to his shoulders, down his arms and chest. It was hard to look past it the first time around, but upon Nicky’s second gander, he cleared his throat. 

“Fuck. I’ve always appreciated a boxer’s body,” he said, a little hoarse. He reached for his drink across the countertop. He took a hearty sip before gently slapping a hand on Neil’s bruised forearms. “Physique-wise, you’re flawless and I’d hire you in a heartbeat.”

“But…?”

“Can’t you work with it?” Andrew countered from across the room. 

Neil wheeled on Andrew with a scowl. “Some people are into it! I just don’t know if my clientele is. Poe’s might be a better bet.”

Andrew rolled his eyes. “Don’t send him to  _Poe’s_ . He’s not into BDSM.”

“Excuse me?” Neil squeaked, tugging his sweatshirt over his chest. Nicky stopped him short.

“This might make for good conversation… Are you a good liar?” Nicky asked, and those innocent brown eyes were easy to read and Nicky didn’t even know it. He wanted to help Neil, but the scars were heartbreaking.  _Soft_ , Neil’s mind supplied, like Nicky’s black curls. 

“Yes, he’s a good liar,” Andrew said.

“I’m not interviewing you,” Nicky snapped, eyes never leaving Neil’s.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he said with a firm nod. 

“Can you flirt?” he asked, and though it wasn’t meant to be a proposal—for Neil to test his acting abilities—but he schmoozed his way around Europe once before, when his mother was in charge of things. Now it was just him, and he’d do what he could.

He leant an elbow on the countertop casually, raising an eyebrow at Nicky. “Why? You want to know where I got this—” Gingerly, he lifted Nicky’s hand and pressed his fingers to the clean scar on his abdomen, where his muscles were taunt from the adrenaline he sought to hold down. It took everything to keep his hands from shaking with it. 

Nicky’s eyes dropped to the scar, perhaps surprised that Neil let him touch it. Neil waited until Nicky brought his eyes up to his again. “I was in Italy visiting a friend. On the way back to the hotel, I stopped a guy from mugging a woman on the street. He stabbed me with a kitchen knife, but I saved the woman.”

Neil dragged Nicky’s hand up to the cuts riddling his collarbone, splaying his fingers across the tight muscles on his shoulders. “You want to know how I got this one?” he asked. Nicky nodded, leaning forward in his seat. “Skydiving in Spain. I landed in a patch of trees.”

Nicky stared at him until Neil’s facade cracked. He grinned, and Nicky pulled away with an excited howl. He threw his head back giggling, clutching a hand to his chest. “ _Fuck_ ! You’ve got it! You sold me,” he cried, kicking his legs out. Neil laughed because he’d never seen a person as excited as Nicky was.

Neil turned back to where Andrew was watching, a bottle half-tipped into pouring. The instant their eyes met, Andrew dropped his gaze and finished pouring his second drink.

Nicky tugged the sweatshirt out of Neil’s hands and plucked at Neil’s sweatpants. “You’ll need better clothes than this. Do you have the money for it?”

“No, I—”

“Yes. He does,” Andrew countered, and his voice only sharpened when Neil turned back to glare at him. “I’ve seen the cash.”

“Oh! Perfect. Andrew has great taste—in clothes  _and_ in men—so he can take you shopping,” Nicky said, leaping from his seat. He clapped his hands excitedly, flinging the sweatshirt to the trashcan without a second thought. Neil chased after it, and fetched it fast enough to bundle it into a wad behind his back so Nicky couldn’t see it. 

Nicky turned back around with an excited sigh, beaming at his newest employee. “This is going to be wonderful. We’ll start you on an off day, just to get the hang of things. When do you think your hands will be ready to go?”

Neil held one out, twisting it over and back again. The scabs were tight and itchy. “Maybe… three days?”

“A week,” Andrew interrupted. “And you haven’t bartended since you were seventeen. Do you _really_ remember all the drinks?”

Neil nearly objected to that, but Nicky was already suggesting that Neil study The Court’s drink list. He fetched a binder out of his desk and handed it to Neil. Neil struggled to hold it without his hands, and flattened it against his chest with his sweatshirt hooked over his elbow. Andrew walked up beside him, chugging his drink to the cherry at the bottom. He popped it into his mouth as Nicky came back with a tablet in hand. He slapped it onto the countertop and gestured Neil over.

“I just need these papers signed by your start date. I hope… these won’t be an issue,” he said, slowly at the end as he looked from Neil to Andrew, and back again. Neil could feel Andrew’s eyes on him as he scrolled down the row of questions involving his home address, his social security number… a  _phone number_ …

“I… I can do it, yeah,” he said, and hoped he wasn’t lying when he said it. Nicky nodded in understanding.

“Would it be easier if I printed it out for you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great, thanks,” Neil said, thinking to his book of identities at the bottom of his duffle. It was hard to keep track of them all, though he’d had Neil Josten for over a year now. He was due for a change.

Across the room, a machine forked over the printed documents, and Nicky fetched them, stapled them, and folded them over to stick into the drinks binder. 

He slapped a business card in there as well, and winked at Neil. “Call me whenever.”

Andrew cleared his throat, and straightened innocently when Nicky scowled at him. Neil looked curiously between them before Nicky puffed out his chest and said confidently, “Once those papers are signed, he’s  _mine_ .”

Andrew stuck a finger out at the hollow of Nicky’s throat. Nicky choked a little, clasping at his neck as Andrew threatened, “Ask me to punch you again and I will.”

“This isn’t me  _asking—_ ”

“It sure as fuck is. I’ll see you later,” Andrew declared with a wave of his hand, gesturing Neil along. Neil looked back at where Nicky stomped his foot like a child.

Nicky threw his fists down and cried, “At least make him  _look nice_ ! I’m charging you with that!”

Andrew stopped short at the threshold, spinning back around to narrow his eyes at his cousin. He slid his empty glass onto the table beside the door and said, hand on his hip, “How much.”

“A lapdance.”

Andrew turned around and continued walking, even when Nicky chased after him, shouting, “Private room! My hot tub? My hot tub  _and_ —! Employee of your choosing—”

Neil was grinning by the end of that, up until the point where Andrew turned back around at the base of the stairs to glare at Nicky. Nicky zipped his mouth shut, stalling a few steps above where Neil looked between them in amusement. Andrew pointed to Neil then, who lifted a curious eyebrow back. 

“This goes into effect after Josten’s papers go through?” Andrew asked, and before Neil could fully process it, Nicky was scoffing.

“It only applies to the employees who sign the papers for paid clientele favors,” Nicky said with a roll of his eyes, shoulders hunched forward. Andrew’s eyes were unwavering. Neil leant back against the stair railing to steady himself. 

Andrew and Nicky stared each other down until at last Neil cleared his throat and offered an indifferent shrug. Andrew winked at Nicky before making his getaway through the main dance hall with Neil on his heels, laughing at the realization fading onto Nicky’s expression. Nicky cased after them with a hurried, “Wait—! What the fuck?”

The instant they were out on the steps beyond The Court doors, Neil set the binder down filled with his papers and tugged his sweatshirt back on. He ignored the way several passerby turned back to watch every inch of his marred skin disappear beneath the fabric, and by then, Andrew had another cigarette out and was lighting it. He stepped up beside the binder and reached down to pick it up as Neil tugged his hoodie up to cover his bedhead. 

As Andrew handed it to him, a cloud of smoke slipping past his lips, Neil studied him for a moment. “Were you serious back there?”

“Serious?” he asked, as though the word wasn’t in his vocabulary.

Neil didn’t answer, and instead waited as Andrew flicked ash at a nearby brick wall and started walking down the steps. They drifted lower and lower from Andrew’s apartment’s street as Andrew shrugged and pocketed his other hand.

“Teasing. I don’t need the money.”

“Does he usually pay you like that?”

Andrew squinted at him. “You really want to know?” he said. They sidled out onto the lower street, sneakers scuffing on the pavement as Neil shrugged as if he really didn’t care. What Andrew did wasn’t his business, and he really shouldn’t have been all that surprised to hear it from Nicky. If Andrew was willing to let a stranger like Neil in (and to do what they did together after such a short period of time together) it wasn’t a stretch to assume that he’d done so with other guys. 

Andrew rolled his eyes. “Nearly forgot,” he sighed, looking out across the expanse of the skyway. He sighed again and turned back to Neil. “Listen—Ignore Nicky. He likes to tease, and I’m sure he’ll do the same to you. The more flustered you get, the more he’ll do it.”

“Right. I figured as much.”

“Sure you did,” he said, and Neil narrowed his eyes.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You mistake apathy with unreadable. Nicky might not know, but you’re naive about this.”

“And who are you to tell me I’m naive?”

“Your pride, because you won’t face it otherwise,” Andrew said. Neil groaned, rolling his head back on his shoulders. He turned away and started down the street where Andrew had indicated at the base of the stairs. 

Andrew followed him after a moment of debate, looking from Neil’s back to the stairs up to The Court. Neil wasn’t a native Yorker, and wouldn’t know the first place to look for decent clothing, not that… it mattered to him, at all. He really couldn’t stand to see Neil in his ratty sweatshirt, and he was almost certain that was the first reason why Nicky had him strip in the office. The sweatshirt didn’t exactly  _flatter him_ , and Andrew could already picture Neil behind the bar in an unbuttoned, solid-colored shirt. Something black… but then again, Andrew was bias. Black would make Neil blend in behind that bar top, and maybe that was what Andrew was looking for. If Neil stood out, it meant he’d be drawing attention from all corners of the bar, away from where Andrew was already planning on sitting.

He put a hand to his head, pushing smoke past his lips. His insides still roiled from the insight of Neil’s plans, of Neil trying to run off with his cash. He still had to split Renee’s share, and he should have done it sooner. Maybe he wouldn’t be so pissed if Neil had just run off with Andrew’s share, but Neil was dragging Renee into it whether he knew it or not. Renee would not have taken lightly to that.

If the night had gone differently, he would have woken in annoyance rather than a panic. He would have lit a cigarette and said, “Good riddance,” as Neil’s voice echoed in his head reminding him of what he’d done that night. One night stands weren’t supposed to be intimate. He caught Neil’s emotions, and it ruined the barrier he kept with the others he picked up from The Court or bars around the city. Those nights were practiced with a mutual understanding. 

_Neil_ . Fucking  _Neil_ was just… happenstance. They didn’t have the distance alcohol provided.

Neil paused at the street corner, and looked back at Andrew as he caught up at an idle stroll. Andrew scowled at him because he didn’t want to feel obligated, but there he was, putting up a goddamn con artist in his flat. Getting the con artist a job. 

Andrew checked his phone. “I’ve got training in an hour. I’ll probably leave during checkout.”

“Fine.”

His curt answer had Andrew’s jaw clenching, irritation ticking his eye. He didn’t sign up for a bullshit, moody babysitting day, but there they were, irritated after a shitty sleep. Andrew barely closed his eyes after catching Neil with Renee’s share of the money, so he was running on a precious, few hours of sleep.

Andrew led the way to a street lined with clothing stores and name brand boutiques. He went to the cheapest option, knowing just what Neil thought about this whole affair. The first few clothes he tossed in Neil’s direction where sneakily distributed back on the racks after a close examination of the price.

Andrew caught Neil putting away another, and yanked his hand up with the jeans. “Trust me—you’ll be making triple this your first night,” he promised, shoving the pants back into Neil’s chest. 

Neil stared at him as he walked back to grab the other clothes Neil discarded. “How would you know? Have you worked there?”

“No,” he said, and that was all Neil needed. Neil scowled at him as he headed for the dressing room.

The moment Neil was in the confines of that dressing room, he was reminded of the alarming lack of weight on his back. He reached back for his duffle where it no longer was. He stilled in the narrow space the room provided, and stared ahead at his reflection in the mirror. He went back to the club, to Nicky, to the walk there from Andrew’s apartment.

_Andrew’s apartment_ .

Relief swept through him, reassured that it was safely locked away. 

As he pulled his sweatshirt and shorts off in the confines of the dressing room, Andrew wandered the floor, flicking through racks without entirely looking at them. He’d abandoned his cigarette outside the door, and wished he could go back for it. Maybe he should have gotten a stronger drink at The Court.

He wandered back to the dressing room where Neil’s sweatshirt was tossed over the door. Andrew leant against the wall and tipped his head to his shoulder as he fixated on the sliver of a gap between the door and the wall. Neil’s back was to the door, though, and so all he saw was Neil’s clothed shoulder before he lost focus again.

“Am I supposed to come out and show you or—?” Neil asked, and Andrew muttered some form of answer along the lines of “sure”.

Neil undid the door lock, and Andrew straightened off of the wall as his eyes trailed past Neil’s exposed calves, and to where the half-door opened and revealed the rest of him. Andrew’s mouth went dry and he feared all the moisture escaped in a dribble of saliva. He put a hand to his mouth to check, still stuck on the enigma that was his sex drive when faced with pure nudity versus well-fitted clothes. He could never hope to understand it.

“Look, I haven’t gone shopping for clothes since I was ten years old. Yes or no?” Neil demanded, swinging his arms up in annoyance. 

Andrew stepped forward and tugged on the buttons up at Neil’s collar. He undid them one-by-one, and found his voice somewhere in between Neil’s clavicle and Neil’s belly button. “The shirt doesn’t matter so much. If it looks good unbuttoned, then Nicky will be happy,” he said, though he already knew the answer to that dilemma. 

Sure enough, Neil looked just as attractive unbuttoned as he did before. Andrew reached around Neil to grab the vest and ordered Neil to take the shirt completely off. 

As Neil slipped his arms through the holes of the vest, he said, “I really don’t see the point in buying jeans that are already ripped.”

Andrew whistled low—not so much in appreciation, but to let some steam out because  _fuck_ Nicky for assigning him this job. “Trust me: You’re doing them justice,” Andrew said with a wave of his hand, walking away before he could do anything rash. “Try on the other pants.”

Andrew survived by some will of God until the time he was set to leave for the gym. He waited out by the exit for Neil to finish paying, and willed his body to stop freaking out now that Neil was back in the ratty sweatshirt. It reminded him fo who he was dealing with, but it did little to disguise Neil’s  _goddamn face_ . Andrew ground his teeth together as Neil walked up.

He fished his keys out of his pocket and held it up to Neil. The instant Neil reached forward to grab it, Andrew yanked it out of reach. “As if I’m letting you into my apartment alone,” he said.

“What? I saw you grab the money on the way out. What else could you have in there?” Neil said, reaching for the keys again. Andrew ducked them behind his back and held Neil off with a hand to his chest. 

“I’ll be done by five—” Neil was already groaning, “—so I’ll meet you down the street at The Foxhole. Ukrainian cafe, can’t miss it. You can smell the sauerkraut a mile away.”

Neil slumped, pouting like a child. Andrew looked away to put his mind at ease.

“Okay. Fine,” Neil said, pushing Andrew’s hand away. Andrew let it fall between them, to where Neil had stepped closer. 

Andrew narrowed his eyes up at Neil, who’s eyebrows were high, eyes focused on where Andrew’s heart stuttered in his chest. He could convince himself that Neil was ignorant and starry-eyed, but that second word was falling short. Neil was intent, focused, but he was an idiot. Andrew couldn’t deny that.

“Remind me what the payment was for helping me out today?” Neil asked, voice hushed between them on that busy street.

Andrew stared at him, urging himself to drop the surprise. Neil acted like this in front of Nicky—he could turn the dalliance on and off as he wished. As their breaths came within mingling distance, Neil’s bandaged hand came to Andrew’s wrist. 

Andrew yanked the keys out of Neil’s grasp and twisted away. The flirtatious intent dropped immediately, and Neil turned away with a disappointed sigh, dropping a hand over his hair. Andrew shook the keys at him before walking off with a mocking, sing-song, “I’ll see you at five!” He was sure Neil would have flipped him off if he could.

 

* * *

 

Andrew’s life was consistent where he could manage it, mostly because training was an every day requirement and covered a large portion of his time aside from doing work for Renee. And work for Renee… was what made consistency a danger. If someone could peg his routine…

He didn’t care. Truthfully, consistency was mentally safe, tho he couldn’t say the same for his physical state. He accepted his own stupidity long ago, but he was too stubborn to stop. Perhaps it was pride, or his own hubris, thinking he could evade the Moriyamas with nothing more than the protection of his reputation. 

But with Neil, that consistency changed. For a time, it was inconsistent, but that inconsistency manifested into something akin to the “normal” he felt before he started putting up a con artist in his apartment. 

It took a week.

Renee slapped something hard and flat onto the rail between them at the base of the stairs. Andrew looked up from her sharp black nails to her stern eyes.

“I don’t agree with this,” she said through tight lips, shaking her head.

She dropped her hand, though, and Andrew’s eyes fell on the pair of identical key card sitting there. He took them and latched one back onto his wallet. The other wasn’t for him. 

“But you don’t care,” she sighed, dropping her eyes to her feet. She pursed her lips. “I shouldn’t be surprised. But I seriously think this is reckless.”

“It isn’t reckless. Reckless would be—”

“Unintentional self-destruction? You’re right. This is intentional,” she countered, and Andrew rolled his eyes. “Don’t self-destruct on me.”

“You know I’m not that kind of person,” he laughed, tipping his head back with a grin. He swallowed hard as Renee glowered up at him, but his smile came back with ease. “I’m worse than that, baby.”

She scoffed and punched him in the arm for it. She shook a finger at him, retreating back up the stairs. “Just watch your back, alright? I sure as Hell can’t keep my eyes on it all the time. I’ll send Nicky on you if I need to!”

“That a threat, baby?” Andrew teased, laughing up at her as she flipped him off and hurried into her office. She looked back at him long enough to watch him turn away and head home. 

As he left The Foxhole, spare key card in hand, he reached that same hand up to rub against his neck. The muscle there was tight, and he again regretted not asking Renee for a massage because  _damn_ , was she good at them. He rolled his head back with his shoulders and proceeded down the street and around the corner to the street that would take him to Nicky’s club. Through the walk, Andrew clutched the keys to his palm until the hard edges left sharp imprints on his calloused skin. He told himself that it was just until Neil’s first paycheck.

Though, Andrew heard about what sort of tips the bartenders got. Any bartender, really, made their bank in tips, so Andrew couldn’t be certain if Neil would duck out after the first night. Buying clothes certainly  _would_ put the trip on hold, if only a little, and Andrew  _knew_ Nicky did that for someone’s sake other than his own. Andrew clenched his teeth and wished he could tell Nicky to fuck off because now he was stuck in a micro apartment with someone who was off limits.

No matter how much Neil teased, Andrew’s self-restraint was greater than it.

Well… it certainly didn’t stop him from claiming a spot at the bar just to watch Neil work his magic.

Andrew settled in, elbow on the counter, watching Neil’s back as he turned to the cash register, cheeky smile glinting in the mirror behind the bar. A myriad of lights splashed over the bar top, from pinks to oranges to yellows as Neil counted out cash and folded the change up with it. Andrew could hardly believe Nicky let Neil near that thing, but then again, he supposed  _he_ was the only one who knew what Neil’s hands were good for now that they were healing up.

Neil’s black hair was slicked back, his fringe waxed and glossy where it kept its form with Andrew’s hair products. He’d heard Neil pop open the can that morning, and then lathered the wax through his hair. Andrew was only pissed because it made Neil look too good. Who knew looking at a guy’s forehead could make Andrew hot and bothered?

Andrew pushed his thumb against his bottom lip and narrowed his eyes at Neil as the guy handed the change over to a customer. The lucky customer was smiling giddily at Neil, and Andrew wouldn’t have been surprised if more than just alcohol was in the mix. There was a reason why Nicky was Renee’s best distributor. Strip clubs, while they have a higher profile for crime, were a prime location for Renee’s main mode of business. Nicky kept his dealings discrete behind locked doors and loyal clientele. 

The customer walked off, and Neil skimmed his eyes down the bar before landing on Andrew’s empty hands. 

Neil walked over, black gloves covering the leftover bandages, and Andrew kept his eyes on Neil’s and nothing more. 

“Like what you see?” Neil said, grinning. Andrew rolled his eyes and settled on the lingerie one of the cage dancers was wearing. He flicked the card around his fingers before setting it on the counter between them. “Andrew.”

“Don’t lose it,” he said, glancing back at Neil’s eyes that were stuck on the card between them. “If you do, we both know what happens.”

Neil’s doe eyes returned to Andrew’s. He smirked, reaching for the card. “Is this you letting me in?” he asked.

Andrew stuck his middle finger onto the card, holding it still beneath Neil’s hand. “I don’t do one-sided trust,” Andrew said, tugging it back. He flicked it up between his fingers and flipping it around. 

“As if I could trust you,” Neil countered, expression dropping. That cheery, bartender facade was gone. 

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Andrew said with a mocking grin as Neil turned to a nearby patron pushing an empty glass across the counter. Neil set out to refill the glass as Andrew cupped a hand over his mouth and called over the music, “What makes me seem like such a bad guy!”

“I don’t know!” Neil called back, waving the soda gun idly. “Maybe it’s your mafia connections!”

Andrew laughed. Neil walked over with a drink, and waved to a regular heading out. Neil’s eyes followed the guy before trailing back to Andrew, leaning an elbow against the counter. “Nicky said you aren’t competing anymore. Break?” he asked.

“Something like that,” Andrew said, sifting around the ice cubes in his drink before tipping the straw against his mouth. “My boss is spreading a rumor that I injured my shoulder. Started it before the fight with you—make that seem like the reason I lost.”

“Explains the shit bets,” Neil sighed. Internally, he could feel the urge to go back into training. A quick run after waking up wasn’t enough to exert the pent-up energy that came with waiting around for Andrew. The runs were so crucial, but were difficult to navigate around Andrew’s schedule when it came to passing in and out of the apartment complex. “Once again you’re the reason I’m here.”

“Not apologizing,” Andrew said.

“Then how are you making money?”

Andrew stayed quiet, eyeing Neil. He watched Neil’s jaw tick at the sound of someone shouting across the club. Irritability. Could have been Andrew’s doing—he’d brought a new batch of cracker dust to Nicky the previous day. Or, it could have been something outside of The Court.

Andrew sucked down half his glass before setting it down with a sigh. “I teach kids how to fight,” he said at last. It wasn’t a lie, but he just didn’t get paid for it. “Kids who wouldn’t have access to that kind of training. Protection, mostly. Self-defense.”

“Cool.”

“What, are you a family guy?” Andrew said, amused by the way Neil rolled his eyes at the comment. “Hate kids, but I hate their circumstances more. They could end up like you and me without that sort of training.”

He knew what he was giving away by saying it, and Neil feigned inattentiveness. Neil walked off silently, processing Andrew’s words. As he readied another drink, wondering what Andrew could possibly know about his own childhood, he glanced down the bar at where Andrew’s drink emptied out. 

_You and me_ .

Whether or not Andrew knew he cracked Neil, Neil couldn’t tell, and he didn’t want to know. He hoped his acting was better than that. 

Erik slipped out of the backroom donning a long black robe and dark lipstick. Neil saw him through the mirror behind bottles of liquor shelved ahead of him, and turned back when Erik ran a hand over his shoulder blades. “You’re set to go. I’ll take over from here,” he said. 

“You sure? I don’t mind.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure Andrew does,” he said with a warning glance in Andrew’s direction. Andrew was acting too busy to care—emphasis on  _acting_ . Neil looked back at Erik, who winked encouragingly at him. If Neil had any sense, he would have blushed, but he didn’t.

Erik oversaw as Neil divvied up the tips from that shift and took his share. It seemed Andrew was right about one thing: The wad of cash in his duffle was growing in size every day.

He headed for the backroom and pushed his hip against it. He caught Andrew’s eye before disappearing out of view to grab his shirt. 

Neil walked down the hall behind the two-way mirror, past the smattering of filtered light and colored shadows around half-empty bottles of liquor. His sweatshirt and shirt hung on a hook at this wall, and he grabbed it on his way out to the floor. Before leaving, however, he caught a glimpse of his stomach disappearing behind the sweatshirt, through the mirrors Nicky had arranged for workers to check themselves when they came in from smoke breaks. 

Neil laid a hand flat over the sweatshirt. The thick fabric hid the ridges, but he knew where all of them were. Beyond that, though, he was starting to see what all the fuss was about when Nicky introduced him to the rest of the team, and how they all looked past that. He was surprised by their seemingly blatant disinterest in the majority of his scarring.

The first night he spoke with any of the dancers, a woman had walked up to him—skin dark and hair even darker, curled tight to her scalp and sharp flicks of pink makeup along her eyelids. She had asked to see his arm closer up, and so he held it out to her. She pressed a hand to the patch of bubbled scars from third degree burns on his bicep.

“I’m sorry,” she’d said.

He’d said this answer before, and so he used it again: “You didn’t do it. Don’t apologize.”

She smiled at him, lifted her brows, before relaxing again. She dropped her hand to where she could formally reach for his. “Danielle—most everyone in The Court calls me Dan, though.”

He shook her hand with an amiable smile. “Neil Josten. I was so sure until tonight that this was a gay club…?”

She’d laughed and reassured him that it was. “Girls are gay too, Josten, haven’t you heard?” she teased, bumping her elbow against his. “Listen—I gotta go, but pour me a drink later?”

As Neil emerged from the back room that night, he sought her face across the crowd. Half of the club was reserved for female dancers, all their cages surrounded by women pushing dollar bills through the wires. Dan was in a duet that night, and Neil swore he saw her wink at him from across the club as she ran her hands down the thighs of one of Nicky’s other girls.

Neil slowed to watch until his view of her was obscured by a group of college kids walking by in obnoxiously colorful outfits. They flocked to the bar where Andrew slid out of his seat, pushing away an empty glass. He walked up to Neil, a bill between the two fingers he inserted into Neil’s pocket. 

“For someone who claims to not be interested, you sure aren’t subtle,” Neil commented.

Andrew walked on ahead, turning to Neil though he gazed straight past him. “Never said I wasn’t interested,” he said, and drifted his eyes up to meet Neil’s.

Neil studied him for a moment, realizing that conversations like this were becoming a daily occurrence, but they were never so obvious. He’d thought it was odd that Andrew craved  _cucumbers_ , of all foods, just two days prior. Neil had gone out to get some because he’d been too paranoid to even consider the possibility of an innuendo, not after that first wretched night.

“Never pegged you as a sex addict,” he said after much internal debate.

“Yeah, well, we met on an intended one-night stand. Not sure how you could think anything different,” Andrew said.

“Emphasis on ‘intended’. Do you need an extension?”

“You know the answer to that,” he said, voice sharp as they exited the club and walked into the cool shadows of the Stairway to Hell. Andrew stepped up towards their street, pausing to look back at Neil. “I won’t do anything unless you say the word.”

“Passive-aggressive much?” 

“Sex isn’t a one-sided act, dipshit.”

“Yeah, but it’d help if you’d say it outright, ya know? I’m shit at subtleties.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve gathered as much,” he said, and Neil glowered, divested in Andrew’s sarcasm. Andrew returned the apathetic look before rolling his eyes, turning, and heading away from Neil and towards the apartment complex. Neil sighed, dragging his aching feet after Andrew and after another inevitable, awkward, passive-aggressive, silent fight to see who would sleep on the floor that night.

When Neil caught up with Andrew, they continued to walk in silence until long after the awkwardness passed. Neil tended to do that. He wasn’t sure why awkwardness flocked to him, but he supposed his lack of a childhood might have something to do with it. He wasn’t quite sure if he grew up too fast, or just  _never_ grew up, but whatever the case he ran here on survival and he’d make it through this in that same manner. Dealing with Andrew was just a fact of getting to England.

Neil itched at the scarring beneath his gloves. He knew he shouldn’t scratch, but the irritation was still there as old scabs healed over and flicked away.

They were passing a designated crosswalk lined with iron fencing. Neil saw it out of habit—men in black stepping out of the stairwell alleyway between two buildings. The neon lights, merged with the early dawn, shifted blue over their black hoodies. Their attention wasn’t on him, but Andrew hadn’t noticed them yet.

He pushed Andrew towards the crosswalk. The instant he did, the attackers moved. “ _Run!_ ” Neil shouted, breaking into a sprint. 

His arms and legs pumped harder, faster than every other morning jog. His feet drilled so hard into the pavement, his feet burned, turning to flames after a long night working. He didn’t know where to go as he skidded out amongst the sidewalk traffic, only to be tugged aside by Andrew leading the way.

The instant they were through the thick of people, they heard the commotion of the men in black colliding with passing shoppers and commuters. Neil spared a glance back at them before his sweatshirt was tugged hard enough to choke. He coughed, stumbling after Andrew up a set of stairs to a higher street.

They dissolved into the dark between the buildings, and the blinds that closed over light windows. It was a narrow passage, and after breaking through to the next street, there was no sign of any pursuers.

Andrew slowed to a jog, and then to a walk, and stopped with his hands on his hips, panting. Neil put a hand to his forehead, pushing back the hairs that fell from his gel.

“I’m guessing that was the mob that’s after you?” Neil said with a flop of his hand. He turned an irritated look onto Andrew, who scowled at him and walked ahead to an awning covering white-painted bricks.

“So observant,” Andrew said, and Neil scoffed. “No shit. They know where I live—never doubted that since my fight with Day—”

Andrew continued to suggest they circle around back and use the far entrance to the apartment complex—maybe even hop in on this street, since Andrew’s complex had two units of sky space. Neil wasn’t paying attention, though, because his mind circled back to  _Day_ . The way he worded it suggested that Andrew had a match with a boxer by the name Day, and Neil only knew one. He knew only one, because Kevin Day was on his radar of people to avoid. Kevin never fought in the same rank as he and Andrew, so fighting Andrew was a safe bet.

Though, that ‘safe bet’ went wrong once. Neil really shouldn’t be so surprised.

“Earth to Neil,” Andrew said, waving a hand in front of his face. “Let’s get moving.”

Neil hurried along after him, their shoulders pressed close, their eyes on every passerby. Neil was back to what he was good at—staying low and keeping his eyes on everyone and everything. He was alarmed by how easy he slipped back into the motions, and how foreign life just ten minutes ago had been. 

_At least you’re not out of practice_ , he mused bitterly.

Andrew stole a hat off of a tourist stand and tugged it over his bleach-blonde hair without a second thought. They curved around the building, following the flow of traffic back over the crosswalk with cars passing above and below them in a whirr of commotion and flashing lights.

Unfortunately for them, they could already see men in black suits at the front of the apartment complex. As they crossed the crosswalk, Neil slung an arm up around Andrew’s shoulders, pocketed his other gloved hand, and together they walked as if couples who did this  _weren’t_ struggling to keep from tripping over their feet. They walked straight ahead to the alley between Andrew’s apartment and the coffeeshop astride it without drawing attention to themselves. 

Andrew glanced over his shoulder back at the street, and turned back around to whisper, “I think we’re clear. They can’t get in without a card.”

“They could’ve stolen one from somebody.”

“If they did, the front desk can cancel apartment cards in a matter of seconds after a call from the owner. I doubt they’d hold one of my neighbors hostage just for this whole shitshow,” Andrew said. He pulled out his card as they approached the alley entrance. 

It was set amongst a small courtyard with a bubbling fountain. A dome was carved out of either buildings flanking the alleyway, and strewn with fluorescent lights. Neil glanced at them overhead before Andrew tugged him inside and shut the door behind them. 

He listened to the hum of electricity fueling the lights down the corridor Andrew walked them down. Their shadows came in spurts, drifting forward and back under every new light fixture overhead. Neil chased after them, hurrying in beside Andrew to the stairwell that took them down to Andrew’s floor.

An alert dinged on Andrew’s phone, buzzing in his pocket. Neil felt it like his heart stammering to a halt in his ribcage. It wasn’t a text alert, and Andrew paused in the stairwell at the sound. 

He closed his eyes and cursed under his breath. He pulled out his phone where his security system pinged in. 

“You can’t fit more than five people in that space—stationary—, three if you’re trying to kill a guy,” Neil reasoned quickly. “I have a gun in my duffle and—”

_My duffle_ . 

Neil’s entire life was in there. 

“You brought a  _gun_ into my apartment?” Andrew hissed, only to curse at himself and put a hand to his head. “Okay, not important right now. I need to call someone.”

Neil waited with his hand to the railing, watching Andrew’s back as he turned and paced up the steps and back down again. The phone rang to voicemail, and Andrew typed in a different number. This one answered on the second ring.

“We’ve got company. And by ‘we’ I mean they’re in my fucking apartment,” Andrew said, voice low in that echo-y stairwell. Neil peered up at the floors above, and down towards Andrew’s floor. It was entirely silent. 

“ _I’m sending Matt over_ . _How many?_ ”

“Three tops in the apartment, but the entire place is surrounded. Tell him to avoid the main entrances. I’ll meet him where they text me,” Andrew said, and hung up a second later. 

He started back up, typing away on his phone with Neil following close behind. They bypassed the exit they walked in from, and past the foyer on that level. The hall to the mailroom was blocked off with a heavy metal door, so Andrew swiped his card and went ahead to a metal safe at the far end of the hall. 

“A safe,” Neil commented as he walked into the room. It was filled with small, padlocked doors not unlike the mail slots outside the room. It was a complete treasure to him—one night and a recorded setup for the security cameras, and Neil would be rich as could be. 

No wonder Andrew hadn’t taken him in here until now.

Andrew spun in his code to his safe box and pried a pistol out of it. “Jesus,” Neil said hand to his forehead as Andrew checked the bullets and stuffed it into his belt. “And you complain about  _me_ having a gun around.”

“ _Your_ gun is where I fucking sleep,” Andrew snapped.

“In a pinch it won’t do you any good from down here.”

“I don’t usually have to worry about that.”

Neil wasn’t given the chance to respond because Andrew was heading out and back to the stairwell. He pocketed his key card

A door opening below. Andrew looked back at Neil, whose eyes widened at what it meant. Heavy voices carried from the entrance, but Neil’s heart was pounding too loud in his ears to hear the words. 

“Up—up—up,” Andrew hissed, dragging Neil up and around the railing as footsteps began hammering up the stairwell.

They hurried up as fast as their feet could carry them, hearts pounding in succession with the cascade of boots catching up to them. Soon, Neil lifted his eyes to see the rooftop exit, clinging to the railing and spinning himself around it, racing higher and closer to an escape—

Andrew shoved into his side, pushing him ahead and clocking his gun in that same moment. He raised it up, dropping his hand to where the attacker had an arm outstretched to Andrew’s abdomen. 

Neil’s shin hit the stairs, and he stumbled, twisting around in time to hear guns click across the stop below them, barrels raised over the railing where the attacker had a pistol pressed to Andrew’s side despite the gun at his throat.

Andrew stilled, staring at the sunglasses blocking him from seeing his attacker’s eyes. 

“Drop the weapon. We’ll shoot if we have to,” the man hissed.

“Alive, huh?” Andrew scoffed, adjusting his hold on the pistol. He raised his thumb over the trigger. “Lot of trouble you’re going through to get me.”

“This isn’t about you anymore,” the man said. Andrew’s expression remained neutral, though Neil knew exactly what he was thinking. The only other object of interest in this dingy stairwell was Neil, and the reality of it covered his entire being in freezing, numbing ice.

Kevin Day. Andrew fought Kevin—of course it all made sense now. If the Moriyamas were smart, they’d have eyes on Andrew and know that Neil was there. Who knew how much they’d seen of his face, but apparently, it was enough to piece together the differences from his childhood photos and the dye and contacts he wore now.

He wanted to curse, but his lips were sealed into a tight line of nerves. Blood trickled onto his tongue where he bit too hard into his cheek to keep from inadvertently screaming. His ears hollowed out into the sound of a cavernous wind howling through, blocking whatever Andrew’s response was. Andrew wasn’t stupid. He wanted the Moriyamas off his back—this was the perfect deal.

Something shot through the roaring in his ear canal a  _lot_ like a bullet. Neil flinched instinctively, staring as chaos erupted in the stairwell.

Andrew dragged him up and shoved him towards the rooftop exit, holding the body of the man who had just threatened him a minute ago. Plinks of guns sunk into the corpse’s chest, sucking into still-bleeding flesh and tearing clothes. Neil used the entire weight of his body to shove through the rooftop exit door, scraping the bottom against concrete to hold it open for Andrew. Bullets shot into it, ringing in his ears as Andrew dove through and rolled to the side in time for Neil to shove the door shut and lock the bracer in place. 

Andrew scrambled to his feet, grabbing Neil by the arm, only to halt at the sound of a voice calling out to them from across the rooftop courtyard. 

Neil gasped, chest constricted. He recognized that voice, not from childhood, but from endless online reports following his boxing career. Neil would never be great enough (or honorable enough) to face Kevin Day in the ring, but it seemed appropriate that they would meet here, Neil and Andrew held at gunpoint. 

Kevin stepped forward from the ranks of half a dozen of Moriyama’s men. “Drop the gun,” Kevin demanded.

Every muscle in Andrew’s body tensed as he dropped the pistol and lowered his hands to his sides from where he had one crossed over Neil’s body. Neil couldn’t pull his eyes from Kevin Day’s face, from how the camera changed his perspective of the man. Kevin’s bright eyes were unusually sunken, tired, maybe, but more than likely annoyed with the situation. His expression was tight, black eyebrows knitted as he stepped across the cobbled walkway to meet them.

Dawn was breaking, shining golden over the walkway. Neil guessed they would have preferred it if this had taken less time—maybe then it would have been dark enough to smuggle their dead bodies out of the apartment complex.

Kevin pulled a piece of paper from the interior pocket of his coat, unfolding it without removing his eyes from Andrew and Neil. He held the papers out to Andrew. 

Andrew stared at Kevin. “I don’t need to see them.”

Kevin shook his head with a hiss, narrowing his eyes at Andrew. “I think you do,” he said, shoving the papers against Andrew’s chest. “So-called Josten’s life means more than the guard you shot. If you hand him over now, we’ll consider a negotiation.”

Andrew flattened a hand over the papers on his chest. He scraped them off and looked down at them. Neil’s heart was in his throat, throbbing painfully against the back of his tongue as Kevin slid his eyes over Neil and settled on meeting his gaze. 

“My father—” Neil started, and saying it out loud had Kevin tipping his head curiously.

Kevin raked his eyes across Neil’s expression before his attention was called to the men surrounding them. They spoke in Japanese, and hearing it had Neil regretting ever setting foot in that hotel where Moriyama’s men damaged his hands. They didn’t know who he was then, but they certainly did now. 

“Has caused problems,” Kevin finished for Neil after listening to the report. “We’re picking up the pieces, and that includes you. Preferably alive, but Master Riko isn’t entirely opposed to using your corpse as leverage.”

“Truthfully I don’t think my corpse would matter much to my father,” Neil confessed, and though the words were spoken low, he was surprised by his own courage in saying them aloud. “I don’t know where he is.”

“Shame,” Kevin said. “When Riko asks, you should have a better answer.”

Andrew lowered the papers, and held them out to Kevin. Kevin eyed them for a long while, and then to Andrew’s face. He took the papers and folded them neatly to place back in his coat pocket. Neil watched the interaction with wide eyes, and then to how Andrew took a slow step away from Neil.

_Shit_ .

Kevin walked away, and one of his men came forward to grab Neil by the arm. Neil tugged away, stumbling back for the door, only to be dragged forward by the rest of them, restraining his arms when he tried to swing at them. He clocked one of them in the knee with his foot. 

“Let me go!” he shouted, snarling as his arm was yanked back. He opened his mouth to scream as they shoved him forward, but someone slapped a hand over his mouth. He did the first thing he could think of—

He clamped his teeth down on the man’s gloved finger and bit as hard as he could.

“ _Fuck!_ ” the guy shrieked as fabric tore. The weight of the man’s finger fell on his tongue, so he spat it out onto the rocks, blood and all. 

He cracked his head back against his attack from behind. His skull made contact with their nose, and the weight on his arms subsided. He swung forward, nailing his elbow into the man’s face beside him, and followed through with his other fist against the man’s cheek. Heat split across his knuckles in an instant, reminding him why he never fought bareknuckle.

“ _Shit_ ,” he seethed, stumbling from the pain. 

In all the commotion, though, he was able to comprehend the blast from a gun behind him. It cut into one of the attacker’s skulls with a sickening, wet  _crack!_ and a spray of pink. Neil looked up at them, and then back to where Andrew tossed the gun out of the belt from the man cradling his broken nose. He grabbed the guy by the straps of his gun holster and used him as a shield, aiming and firing at four-fingers, and again to the guy raising up to aim at Andrew. 

It was too fast for Neil to process until all of the bodies collapsed around them all at once. Neil flinched, still clutching at the blood seeping from one of his broken scabs. Andrew put the gun to the back of his shield’s head and finished the job, shoving him forward to look at the last man standing across the courtyard.

Kevin Day watched from the stone columns encasing the courtyard. He didn’t have a weapon, maybe because he trusted that Andrew wouldn’t shoot, but Neil could see the terror. He’d experienced it enough to know what it looked like on prey.

“I told you not to mess with me,” Andrew spat at him, and Kevin had the good sense to flinch.

“You’re going to regret this,” he hissed back, circling around the column to leave.

“Neil,” Andrew said, and it brought Neil’s attention back to what was at stake. “Tackle him.”

Neil nodded curtly before turning and taking off. He lunged over the bloody corpse between him and where Kevin took to sprinting towards the streets. But, unlike Kevin, Neil had a lifetime of experience perfecting his speed. A quick sprint was nothing to him. 

Kevin scrambled down the steps of the courtyard, and Neil flew over them, colliding against Kevin’s back. They went down at a roll, concrete scraping up Kevin’s chin and burning the side of Neil’s face. Neil scrambled to hold Kevin’s arms down, latching his fists together at his front. 

Andrew caught up with them after rooting through the bodies for weapons and ammo, and a belt. Neil heard his footsteps approaching fast, and soon Kevin was spitting curses at them as Andrew snapped the belt straight and wrapped it around Kevin’s joined wrists. Neil took his wallet out and shoved the leather fold into Kevin’s mouth.

He yanked it tight before being interrupted by his phone buzzing. That brief moment of distraction sent Kevin lunging forward, teeth bared, trying to go for Andrew’s earlobe. Neil yanked him back, holding tight as Kevin thrashed and kicked, blood trickling from his lip. 

Andrew answered the phone. “Roof courtyard. Just coast straight up if you can. I’ve got a present for Renee,” he said. 

Neil relaxed. Safety was just a car ride away. They’d be out of Andrew’s apartment in—

_Fuck, your duffle is still in there_ , his mind cried, and it stilled his rapid beating heart. The abrupt realization felt like sparks splitting through his veins, alerting every last limb of where they needed to be  _right now_ .

“Andrew—” he started in a panic. “Andrew, my duffle—”

“Forget about it—”

“ _No_ !” he shouted, eyes shut. The eruption caused Kevin to still in his arms. “My life is in there. How am I supposed to leave without it?”

He couldn’t say it out loud, not in front of Kevin, but the double entendre was clear to Andrew. Andrew knew exactly where he wanted to leave to. 

Andrew stared at him like he was mad, like moving to Europe was the least of their concerns. Though, after the apartment break-in, and that close-call with Moriyama’s men, it was all Neil could think about. He survived this to get to Europe. He did  _not_ survive this for a car ride to another location in Moriyama territory. He’d never be safe here.

“Renee can help you make it back,” Andrew promised, and Neil slumped, devastated. “Now help me with this dipshit. We’ll figure it out later.”

The relief from earlier felt so distant. It tore away at Neil’s resolve to stay grounded, and when he moved, it was all for the sake of getting out of there with Kevin. He could see why Andrew would have wanted to keep Kevin Day alive— _insurance_ , as the Moriyamas had said to Neil.

A blue car was waiting for them on the curb, the fencing unlocked with a man the size of a basketball player guarding it. The guy seemed calm enough until they emerged from around the building courtyard walls with a hostage. Andrew all but carried Kevin to the fencing as the man looked frantically up and down the sidewalk and ushered them through.

“Trunk?” Neil suggested.

“No, he’ll know how to get out,” Andrew said through strained breaths. “Matt—”

“On it!” the guy said, hurrying forward and tearing open the back seat door. Andrew shoved Kevin in, either not caring or not noticing that Kevin bumped his head on the frame. He snuck in after Kevin and shut the door, so Neil claimed shotgun.

His eyes followed Matt as the guy walked around the holo-walkway around the vehicle. Parked cars triggered a temporary walking surface to make entering and exiting the vehicle smoother (and safer). Neil watched as the man dropped down into the driver’s seat and pulled away without a pause, and didn’t speak or look until they were in the clear, long ahead of the constant stream of sirens around the city. Who knew which was called in for the shootout.

Matt then glanced at Neil, a faint smile on his lips. “You good?” he asked, and Neil shrugged. “What’s ya name?”

“Neil Josten. Had a match with Andrew, now I work at The Court.”

“Worked,” Andrew corrected. “Whether or not they know you work there, they know I frequent the place.”

“Joy,” Neil sighed, only to pause and twist around to glare at Andrew. “Since when did you learn to shoot a gun like that? I’ve never seen anything like—”

He halted, addressing the tension in Andrew’s brow. He had a hand clasped over his shoulder, and with his black shirt, it was difficult to see the blood. He raised his hand, and found it printed in red. 

“Comes with the job,” Matt said over the humming in Neil’s ears. Andrew met his eyes and shook his head dismissively, clasping his hand over the surface wound, brow still tight.

Neil cleared his throat, glancing sparingly at Matt. “And I’m sure one of you will enlighten me as to what that is?” Neil said, raising an eyebrow at them.

“Maybe I would have, if you fessed up about being peachy with the Moriyamas.” Andrew’s words had Matt looking sharply to Neil, who settled back in his seat with a roll of his eyes. Disguising his own horror at their dilemma was enough to deal with as it was.

“I’ve never been peachy,” he muttered. “My father was involved with them a while back. I don’t know what happened after.”

“After what? You skipped out?” Andrew asked.

Neil glanced back at him, and then to Kevin, whose shoulders heaved with each hard breath, eyes zoned in on the back of Neil’s head. Kevin spat the wallet out of his mouth after much fussing. Andrew was already reaching to take off his shoes before Kevin even opened his mouth.

As Andrew ripped his sock off with a pained grunt, Kevin seethed, “You really think a car and a couple of dumbass friends are going to fucking hold off the Moriyamas?”

Andrew snapped the sock tight before bunching it up. “No, but maybe Walker will,” he said. Kevin opened his mouth to curse some more, but got a smelly sock put in it instead. Kevin stared at Andrew, disgust crawling across his face at the taste of the sock, and then stared at Matt, and then to Neil. 

His eyes widened, brows pushed up in distress.“ _Ramay Wawka_ ?”

 

* * *

 

Renee Walker wasn’t anything like Neil assumed from far-away glances at the Foxhole gym. Her white hair framed a round, pale face and sharp eyes. Asian, and after the run-in with the Moriyamas, Neil couldn’t help but be a little suspicious.

Renee watched apathetically as Andrew dragged Kevin in through the back of the gym. Neil crossed his arms, worry etching his expression as he watched Renee stare into Kevin’s dead eyes before dragging her attention over to where Matt shrugged. 

“You were right. I don’t like this present at all,” she said.

“That makes four of us,” Andrew said, kicking his foot against the backs of Kevin’s knees. Kevin collapsed forward, muttering something around the sock. Saliva mixed with the scrapes of blood on his face, dripping down his chin as he seethed up at Renee Walker. 

Renee gestured to that… mess. Andrew raised an eyebrow at her. 

She shrugged innocently. “I want to know what he has to say,” she confessed.

“His vocabulary consists of curses,” Matt supplied, voice dull. He leant back against Renee’s desk, brushing aside a stack of papers to do so. Her office was coated in newspaper clippings and photographs, like every other surface in the building.

Renee crouched down, touching her fingertips to the concrete between her feet and Kevin’s knees. She looked like she was comforting a scared animal, and as she reached forward, gently, Kevin panicked breaths picked up. He could hardly stray his eyes, but when he did, he looked to Neil as she pulled the wet sock from his mouth. His bruised, red lips were slick with saliva as he coughed, turning his head away from her. 

He pressed his chin to his shoulder, and Neil couldn’t see his expression when Renee whispered something to him. He shook his head, though, and the response prompted Renee to stand.

She pointed to her desk. Matt moved immediately, walking around to the set of drawers hidden behind the desk. Neil was moving, and before he realized it, he had already taken two steps away from the scene and towards the door that would take him to the gym. He looked from Kevin to Andrew, who stood despondent at the back entrance, arms crossed, one hand steady on his bloody shoulder, and eyes on the black case Matt removed from the desk. 

The moment he set the hard case onto the wood, Kevin grimaced. 

“You know what that is, don’t you?” Renee said, low, cold voice casting a chill down Neil’s spine. She reached a hand out once Matt lifted the top of the case. He dislodged something from inside, and raised a sleek blade up for Kevin to see before passing it to Renee.

“I didn’t want to cause a ruckus, you see,” she started, twisting the blade between her fingers in a practiced, smooth motion. She stilled it between her thumb and forefinger. “But you came for my favorite star’s life.”

Kevin shook his head quickly. “He wanted Andrew alive if he could—”

“Tell that to the shot in Andrew’s shoulder. Any farther to the right and he’d be bleeding out.”

“Renee,” Andrew sighed, but she didn’t listen.

“We were there for Josten,” Kevin whispered, sparing a shaky look at Renee, and past her to where Neil had his eyes on the knife in Renee’s hand. “Just… another stray.”

Neil swallowed hard, nerves climbing over his shoulders like a chilled hand raising up to clutch onto his scalp. The sensation tingled all the way to his skull where he tightened his jaw until it ached. He resisted the urge to run when Renee turned and looked at him with those hollow eyes.

“You’re with the Moriyamas?” she asked.

Neil was too terrified to speak, so he took to shaking his head. 

“His father was, supposedly,” Andrew said, and the moment Renee turned away from Neil to look at Andrew, a great tension lifted from Neil’s body.

“As soon as Wesninski lost Moriyama property, he vanished,” Kevin explained.

“What did he lose?” Renee demanded. The shine of her knife weighed heavier on Kevin and Neil both.

Kevin looked away from her, and Neil stilled as Kevin settled his sights on him from across the room. In the silence that followed, Renee settled back on her heels, dropping her forearms onto her knees. She stared at Neil, who paled enough to fade into nothing. The weight lifted in his head, and he felt himself vanishing. This was it. This was how he died.

He stepped away, staggering, reaching for the door handle. He escaped the room, gasping for breath, clutching at the stair railing as the door swung shut behind him. The AC in the gym did little to draw the numbness out of him, and so he stumbled, foot after foot, down the stairs and towards the gym bathroom. He could feel his weight returning to him as he jogged across the gym, panting hard. It settled in his stomach, and it lifted, smothered in the taste of bile rising in his throat.

He couldn’t make it past the first stall. He pushed in, and vomited the contents of his stomach. It sloshed into the toilet boil, splattered on the seat. He slumped against the concrete wall, coughing, hands to his forehead. Unable to stand, he collapsed, and accepted this new position with what little dignity he had left.

He wiped his mouth off with toilet paper and flushed it. He pressed his forearms to his knees, and his forehead to his hands. This was precisely how Andrew found him a minute later, footsteps passing calmly over the tiles. 

Andrew said nothing as he crouched down to Neil’s level. Neil dragged his nails against his scalp, clutching at his hair as he gasped out a pained laugh. 

“I can’t stay here,” Neil whispered, staring at his feet. 

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Andrew sighed. Neil stared at him, and Andrew continued to stare at the wall above Neil’s head. “Renee’s got a place. No one’ll find you there.”

“What about you?” he asked. The crack in Neil’s voice had Andrew dropping his eyes to Neil’s. A tinge of something other than  _fear_ struck Neil’s chest, and it brought him back to that first night when it no longer became a one night stand. It was  _personal_ .

Andrew pursed his lips and swallowed down whatever he was originally going to say. He looked to his hands, and plucked his fingers against the edge of one of his armbands. “I’ll be there,” he said. “But I have work to do for Renee. I’ll be in and out.”

“How will I get to Europe if I can’t work for Nicky?”

“You’ll be in and out too,” Andrew said, irritated, as if Neil had interrupted his pause between sentences. Neil clamped his mouth shut, lowering his hands to his legs. “Working for Renee. She’ll find use for you.”

He knew what that meant, and he wouldn’t have stomached it if it weren’t for the sake of getting to Europe. He swallowed his reservations down. 

“What do you say?” Andrew said. He lifted a hand to Neil. A silent invitation.

Neil reached for it, pausing a few inches from contact. Andrew’s hand was painted brown with dried blood, and Neil clasped onto it and gave it a firm shake. “Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly did NOT expect to write as much as I did for the second part, but it's here now and there's nothing I can do about that.
> 
> [Fight me on Tumblr!](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> LMAO I thought it'd be super fun making an audiobook for this but I was just too excited to share this with you guys, so it never happened. becAUSE THE FOXHOLE COURT IS GETTING AN AUDIOBOOK!! AND I'M SO EXCITED!! I LOVE LISTENING TO AUDIOBOOKS!! Let me here _"That doesn't mean I wouldn't blow you"_ whispered in my ear. Just once.
> 
> [Tumblr](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/girlskylark)


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